


A Small Life

by InSpiteOfAllTheHeartaches



Series: A Small Life [1]
Category: Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Angst, Canon Era, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Friendship, Grief/Mourning, Honeymoon, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, Insecurity, Making Out, Married Life, Past Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:15:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 69
Words: 238,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28312206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InSpiteOfAllTheHeartaches/pseuds/InSpiteOfAllTheHeartaches
Summary: "Since when do you take notice of my clothes, Kelly?" "Since I's been wantin' to takes 'em off o' you?" Life ain't been easy since the strike, especially not for Jack and Katherine. With class differences to battle, a crowd of thirty newsies to support, and no idea where their future lies, the couple struggle to carve out their small life in a big city.
Relationships: Jack Kelly/Katherine Plumber Pulitzer
Series: A Small Life [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2119809
Comments: 527
Kudos: 88





	1. Chapter 1

**August 21st, 1899**

_Finally finished._ Jack leans back against the railing which wraps around the lodgehouse roof and rests his head against the cool metal bars. He'll drop it off tomorrow evening, but now he can finally sleep. Opening leaden eyes, he looks down once more at the finished drawing, a practically meaningless political cartoon. _Yeah,_ he thinks, _but a meaningless political cartoon that will pay for Race's bed at the lodgehouse for the next month._ He folds it carefully, tucks it under his pillow, and blows out the candle stub, protected from the night-time winds by his rolled up blanket. He has three hours before the bell rings in the morning.

He wakes up to the circulation bell ringing and something wooden poking at his side. He wafts a hand and manages to grab hold of it, whatever it is, jarring his wrist in the process.

"Hey, get off my crutch!" Damnit, Crutchie. "And get off your lazy butt 'nd all. Them papes won't sell themselves."

"I's up, I's up." Jack throws up his hands in mock surrender, wincing at the ache in his back as he sits up and rubs the sleep from his eyes.

"You look awful, Jack." The younger boy looks down at him, face morphing from amusement to concern.

"Gee, thanks, Crutchie. Jus' what every guy wants to hear." He snarks back, pulling on his blue shirt and fiddling with the buttons. He knows that Crutchie's right, of course, that his cheeks are more drawn than they used to be, that the dark circles under his eyes are darker, that old wounds from more than a decade of street fights are hurting him more than they used to.

"I's serious. When did you get to sleep last night?"

"Why's it matter?"

"'Cos you's doin' too much, that's why. You don' needs the papes money no more, why ain't you just sittin' 'nd drawin'?"

"And miss out on the fun o' sellin' papes? You crazy?" He stands up, snatches up his cap and stuffs last night's drawing in his pocket. "C'mon, lemme help you down."

…

Jack is coming out of the offices of The World when he sees her. He has his pay in one pocket, courtesy of handing in his latest political cartoon, and the list of new drawings they want for the next day. He doesn't even need to look at it to know that the list will be painfully long.

He hurts, he hurts all over, and he's exhausted. He hasn't eaten since his morning coffee and half a stale donut, courtesy of the sisters. He's just tired; the kind of tired that settles deep down in your bones and that you can't shift even with a week of sleep. It's been a slow news day and even his charm hasn't managed to shift the papes. It was quarter past five when he'd finally sold his last one and he'd had to run to Davey's to get him to check the spelling of his cartoon and then run over to the offices to get it on the desk for six. He knows that he could ask Katherine to check them, that she'd be more than happy to, but he just can't stand to remind her of the kind of guys she's with. _Girls like you don't wind up with guys like me._ And then he sees her and he can hardly think. She's sat on a bench on the opposite side of the street, reading a book in the orange glow of late afternoon sunlight, and it takes every ounce of self-control he has to check that the street is clear before he sprints over to her.

"You waitin' for someone to walk you home, Miss?" He adjusts his cap and then shoves his hands deep into his trouser pockets, unable to keep the grin from his face.

Katherine looks up at him and hops to her feet, throwing her arms around his neck. An elderly man walking by gives them a dirty look and she somehow remembers her propriety, dropping her arms, a little embarrassed.

"I've missed you." She smiles.

"I missed you too, Ace. You know what it's like though, life o' a union leader, hotshot illustrator for The World-"

"And so very modest." Jack laughs at that, offering her his arm. To his surprise, she links arms with him only to turn them both around, in the opposite direction from her home. This is unusual. Whenever she ever meets him after work, whenever he's ever lucky enough to step out of the office to see her on that bench across the street, he always walks her home. He's hardly a gentleman, but he's trying, damn it, and here she is again turning his plans upside down like she always does, all soft smiles and sharp wit.

"I, uh, think we're goin' in the wrong direction, sweetheart."

"I don't." Katherine replies shortly. Jack raises one questioning eyebrow. "I hate my father. I don't want to go home and talk to him yet. So, I'm coming to the lodgehouse with you." Jack stiffens. She falters then, looks nervous rather than determined. "I mean, if that's alright?"

"Shoot, Ace, you's always welcome, you knows that," he manages to mumble out, trying to quell the embarrassment he feels at the idea of Katherine Pulitzer, high society lady, spending more than five minutes inside the lodgehouse; it's bad enough that she's been up in his penthouse before, but to have dinner with them… "but I's gotta pick up some stuff for the boys' dinner on the way, 'nd then I's gotta make it, 'nd then I's got to work." Her face falls and he could kick himself. "I means, you can come, but it ain't gonna be the Ritz."

"I hate the Ritz." She replies, her face lighting up.

It hadn't occurred to Jack, not until that very moment, that she might have actually been to the Ritz. It was at times like these that he wondered what on God's green earth he was doing, stepping out with a girl like her. She needed someone better, someone like Darcy, someone who could buy her pretty dresses and take her to fancy dinners and take her to stay at the Ritz. Not someone like him, someone who could offer at best a hot meal and a blanket, and at worst not even that. But she's oblivious, of course she is, and she tells him about her day and the story she's working on. She tells him about her fight with her father and-

"Katherine?" Jack snaps out of his half-listening, half-worrying trance as Katherine unlinks her arm from his and stops to greet another woman around her age, accompanied by a man a little shorter than himself.

"Eliza, how lovely to see you!" Katherine is glowing, having put on her high society mask. "And Mr. Vanderblit, it has been quite a while – last year's Christmas party, I believe? May I introduce Mr. Jack Kelly."

Jack shakes Mr. Vanderblit's hand firmly and relishes in the realisation that his grip is substantially stronger than the other man's. That said, Mr. Vanderblit had the appearance of a man who had never picked up so much as a teaspoon in his entire life. It's when he turns to Elizabeth, presumably one of Katherine's friends, and sees her outstretched hand, that he gets it wrong. He knows it, too, the second he reaches out and shakes her hand as well, only for the woman's expression to turn a mixture of confused and derisive. He was supposed to kiss her hand. Of course he was. Jack inwardly curses his own stupidity. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Katherine's hand covering her mouth, stifling a giggle. He knows that her sense of humour is one of the best things about her, that he loves her ability to find humour in any situation, but damn it if he doesn't feel patronized. He's not some performing monkey, some low class toy she can introduce to these snobs so that she can laugh at the consequences. He withdraws his hand.

"Pleasure to meet'cha both."

"Likewise." Mr. Vanderblit's mouth presses into a thin line below his carefully trimmed mustache and Elizabeth tosses Jack a scornful look before turning to Katherine.

"I presume you're still coming for tea on Saturday, Katherine, dearest. I do have so many things to discuss with you. I feel as though I haven't seen you since you started that job at the New York Sun."

Jack has to bite his lip to stop himself calling this woman out for sounding so judgmental about Katherine's career, but Katherine, at least, thanks Elizabeth politely before linking arms with Jack once more and setting off down the street. He's in a black mood now, if he wasn't already.

"Jack, please don't be sullen. It was really rather funny-"

"Funny to you, maybe," he snaps back, "to you and your friends who looks down their noses at folks like me, who don't know nothin' about you and your fancy words like 'sullen'."

"It means bad-tempered."

"See? I clearly ain't smart enough to fit in."

"Jack, please, I didn't mean to upset you-"

"I ain't upset, alright?" He forces himself to release his hands from the fists they've balled into. "I ain't upset." He rolls his shoulders back and glances over to her. There's a strange expression on her face, concern with just a hint of amusement. That's all it takes, then he's chuckling. "It was pretty funny," he grins at her, "did you see her face when I shook her hand? 'Magine if I'da spit on it first!"

And then Katherine's laughing with him and they're okay again, just like that. These little fights happen often and always because of their class differences. Jack can't help wondering how long they'll be able to fix their problems so easily.

…

"Grub's up, boys!" Jack yells.

With that, thirty newsies come barrelling around the corner from the bunk room and cram themselves into the tiny lodgehouse kitchen around a table meant for ten. Katherine follows in their wake, looking a little dazed from the poker game she'd been dragged into. There's a big blackened cookpot on the middle of the table full with something that looks like beef stew, though Jack wouldn't be surprised if it turned out the butcher had given him dog meat instead. Next to it is a plate of stale brown rolls, but big ones, and enough to go around. When he's trying to give thirty hungry boys at least one meal a day out of paper money and his salary, it's quantity over quality. The boys are practically drooling into the pot when Jack stops them.

"Hey, boys. We ain't animals." He spreads his hands wide, then glances up at Katherine. "Ladies first?" Katherine looks around at the boys' hunger-drawn faces, then at the slop in the cookpot.

"I'm fine, thank you, I've already eaten." She lies over the sound of her stomach grumbling, but lucky for her, Jack just shrugs it off.

"Go ahead then, you lot." Jack hugs the wall of the kitchen and edges around to Katherine, guiding her back into the bunk room as the meal is set upon by the crowd of newsies. "And you lot," he yells over his shoulder, "are doin' the washin' up. I want it spotless!"

When he walks into the bunk room, Jack realises, for the first time in his life, that it smells. It smells of sweat and unwashed bodies and sickness and though he shouldn't expect anything else when it's two boys to a bunk, he feels a sudden wave of embarrassment at what Katherine must see this as.

"Come with me," he whispers to her, mouth up against her ear in the way that he knows sends shivers down her spine, and leads her over to the window, hopping out onto the fire escape and offering his hand to help her out after him. Leading her up the fire escape, he asks "they didn't scare you too much, did they?"

"Not at all," Katherine says, and he can tell from the smile in her voice that at least she wasn't disgusted by the boys themselves, "they're really very sweet."

"That's one word for it." Jack snorts, helping her up the last few steps to his penthouse, also known as the blanket, pillow, and bag stuffed underneath the water tank on the roof of the lodgehouse.

Jack sits down, back against the water tank, but Katherine looks around, surveying the city spread out below them. The warm August wind whips her auburn curls across her face and Jack will be damned if she doesn't look like an angel, stood there, serene in a dress so pale blue it might as well be heavenly white. He can't keep his eyes open though, he's just so bone tired, and he's almost asleep when she next speaks.

"This view is incredible." Katherine says, still looking out.

"Sure is." He replies, looking her up and down.

She turns, blushing when she realises he's looking at her, then wanders over and slides down next to him, leaning her head on his shoulder. She smells of honey and ink and expensive perfume. Jack could just drink her in, but the moment doesn't last because she's shifting against him, looking up at him with those big green eyes, giving him that look that lets him know that she's just itching to be kissed. And damn it if he doesn't comply.

It's got none of their usual passion, the kind that leaves Jack feeling that if he sees her just one more time he's going to snap and rip the pretty little pearl buttons right off her blouse. No, this is long and languid and oh-so very comfortable. It feels easy somehow, in a way that it hasn't with any of the other girls he's been with, in the way that he doesn't feel like he wants to run for the hills as soon as he's got what he wants. It's not even Katherine, the challenge, though it was at first. It's Katherine, herself, affectionate and smart and talented.

"Jack, we- oh." At the sound of Elmer's voice, Jack breaks their kiss. He doesn't pull away though, just closes his eyes and rests his forehead against Katherine's.

"This better be good, Elmer." He growls.

"I, uh, I ain't tryna interrupt, it's just, we's, uh, we's tryna get the little ones inta bed and it ain't goin' so well. Little Carl, he says he won't have nobody but you."

"I's on my way." Jack sighs.

He lets go of Katherine and she feels bereft, her body aching for him in the places where he's had one arm wrapped around her waist and the other cradling her face. But he retreats still, scrambling to his feet and offering her a hand. As they descend the fire escape, Jack is practically walking backwards in order to keep holding Katherine's hand (he says it's so she doesn't fall – she doesn't believe him), and he keeps hold of it until he's helped her back in through the window. Jack can hear the sobbing as soon as he enters the bunk room and makes a beeline for Carl's bunk.

"Hey, Carl," he perches on the end of the low bunk that holds the small boy, who can't be more than seven or eight, and ducks his head to avoid hitting it on the bunk above, "Elmer tells me you ain't feelin' too bright." The boy, whose thick black curls, not unlike Jack's, hung down over his puffy eyes, shook his head tearfully. "You wanna tell me 'bout it?"

"I's 'fraid o' the nightmares. I don't wants to go to sleep." Jack smiles softly and adjusts himself on the bunk so he can lay down facing Carl.

"I gets nightmares too sometimes."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, and you know what I do?" The boy shakes his head again. "I thinks 'bout Santa Fe."

"Whassat?" Carl mumbles around his thumb.

"You close your eyes, an' I'll tell you's all about it." Carl closes his eyes obediently. "There's this little town out west an' it's called Santa Fe. All 'round it, there's just green, green as is bigger than the whole o' New York. And there's people there, and they're building a city, right up from nothin', just with the clay they's pulled outta the ground."

As Katherine looks on, the bunk room slowly falls silent, each and every newsboy rolling over in their bed to listen. Her heart swells, because that's _her_ Jack and she has no idea what she did to deserve this egotistical, flirtatious wonder of a man.

"They's always happy," Jack continues, "'cause they's all gots their own land and they's plantin' crops to eat. An' on Sundays, they don't do nothin', they gets the whole day off. And when we comes along, they asks us, 'Hey, Carl, Jack, come and sits wi' us 'round the fire, we gots some mighty fine tales to tells you' and they ain't just friends, then, they's family. Everybody always wants you 'round in Santa Fe. You'll gets there someday Carl, you will."

By this point, the little boy's mouth has dropped full open, and his breathing is heavy. Slowly and carefully, Jack slips off the bed and gently pulls the scratchy woollen blanket up over the younger boy. When he turns around, he feels the heat of thirty pairs of eyes on him and the softness he'd been wearing is quickly exchanged for his usual cocky façade.

"What you all lookin' at, 'ey?" All of the newsies mumble unintelligibly, turning their eyes down, and Jack shakes his head. "Jus' get outta here so's the little kids can sleep, alright." With creeping feet, the boys flee the room.

Katherine reaches out for his hand from where she's stood, but he flinches away the instant her fingers brush his hand, jerking away like he's been burned and whipping around with something dark flitting behind his eyes. But seconds later, once he's realised it's her, he's relaxes, plastering on a charismatic smile.

"Hell, Ace, you's makin' me jump." He laughs softly, but there's little humour in it. "I'll just go check on the kitchen, then I'll walk you back." She nods, half-smiling, and follows him as he heads into the next room.

The kids have done a good job, scrubbed the cookpot clean and left it to soak in the sink. There are two brown rolls left on the sideboard, one with faint teeth marks in the side that's slightly crushed from being snatched away. Jack's fairly sure that Crutchie's behind them being left and he's more grateful than he'd like to admit. Just at the sight of them, he feels his stomach flip over. He's never known what its like not to be hungry, though he'd be lying if he said that he isn't tempted every night to go into the bakery just down the street from the Pulizter Building and spend his whole day's pay on gorging himself silly. He'd be lying, too, if he said the thought didn't make him feel guilty, guilty for wanting and guilty for being able to afford, when the kids back here at the lodgehouse couldn't even dream of such things. And he'd be lying if he said that the thought didn't terrify him too, the thought that he one day might not be strong enough to resist the smell of fresh doughnuts wafting out the open door, and that he might eat up his dollars rather than storing them away.

He's storing them away now, all his salary, in what used to be his Santa Fe fund. Sure, he has to dip into it now and again when the soles of Buttons' shoes wear out or Albert gets sick and can't sell papes, but he's trying, hell, he's trying. He doesn't know what it's a fund for now, though. An apartment, he supposes, when he ages out of the lodgehouse. Somewhere with two bedrooms, so he can bring Crutchie someplace dry, someplace where the cold won't get into his bum leg and they can both sleep in beds with blankets. And after that, well, a future. A ring, for Katherine. A house. Kids, kids of his own, with as many uncles as they can count and then some.

He shakes his head as he takes a rough bite out of the stale roll. As if. He knows what he has with Katherine won't last that long – how could it? He sure as hell can't give her everything she needs, everything she's used to, everything she deserves. Just like always, he's living day to day, hoping just to eke out another few hours before she realises that she's making a mistake.

"You're so good with children." Katherine's voice snaps him out of his reverie and he laughs around a mouthful of bread.

"Well, shucks, I's raised nearly every boy here, Ace. I should hope I knows how to get a kid to sleep." He rubs at the back of his neck, looking down.

Katherine rolls her eyes, crossing the kitchen and pressing him up against the wall, kissing him with such ferocity that Jack doesn't even know what to do with himself. Then, just like that, she's turned away and is starting to walk away towards the stairs. Without thinking, he catches hold of her wrist and pulls her back to him.

"The hell you playin' at?" He breathes. "You can't jus' kiss a guy like that with no explanation an' then go wanderin' off!"

She looks him dead in the eyes.

"You, Jack Kelly, are the most wonderful man in the world and I wouldn't change you for ten thousand dollars. Explanation enough for you?" She turns away once more.

"I think I could do with a little more explanation." Jack tugs her back again and pulls her into a blistering kiss, his right hand coming up to tangle in her hair, cushioning her head as he spins them around and pins her against the wall, his other hand bracing himself against its brick as she melts into him. She's kissing him back, her fingers trailing fire across his shoulders, the taut muscle underneath his shirt, up into his hair, gently tugging on his dark curls in the way that makes him moan into her mouth just a little, and he can't _think_.

"I think I understand now." He says, breaking away from her with a breathless grin and taking her arm. It's a good job he does, or Katherine thinks her knees might just buckle underneath her. "C'mon, I'll walk you home. 'S gettin' pretty late."


	2. Chapter 2

"So, Katherine, this, ahem," Elizabeth takes a sip of her tea, then daintily replaces the cup on its saucer which sits on the little mahogany table in the centre of the drawing room, " _man_ you were stepping out with on Monday."

"Jack." Katherine takes a pointed sip of her own tea.

Of course, this had to be brought up. She knows that these girls are decent, of course, she'd probably have been just as sceptical of a friend with a career who was stepping out with a man of unknown parentage a couple of years ago. Still, she doesn't enjoy having so many pairs of wide eyes fixed on her over the rims of their teacups, intricate embroideries perched, half-finished, upon their laps.

"You address him by his first name?" Cornelia hisses from the opposite side of the circle, caught between horror and glee. Katherine only shrugs in response.

"And what does he do?" Elizabeth presses.

"He's an illustrator for The World." Katherine beams.

She's so unbelievably proud of him. She thinks of the leather-bound scrapbook with thick, heavy-weight paper that is hidden by her room's floral bedskirt back home, the book's ever-growing collection of newspaper clippings and little watercolours of sunsets and cities splashed across the back of envelopes which appear every so often in her pigeonhole at the New York Sun.

"But you introduced him as Jack _Kelly_ ," Elizabeth continues, "surely not the same Jack Kelly that you wrote about that led that gang of rioting newsies?"

"He's their elected union leader, actually." She presses her lips together as the girls collectively gasp.

"What are you thinking, Katherine?" Cries Rose, from beside her. "Eliza told us he was handsome, but he's a – well, he's basically a criminal! You can't be serious about this courtship. Especially not when you have Darcy wrapped around your little finger; you know he'd go straight to your father's office to ask for your hand if you'd only show the slightest bit of interest."

Cornelia shoots Rose a disapproving glare. _Now that's interesting._ Katherine hadn't known that Cornelia had designs on Darcy, but it does make sense now she thinks about it. Cornelia is one of the most singularly silly girls of her acquaintance generally, so when she had giggled behind her fan with that coquettish affectation some girls take it into their heads to adopt at the last party, Katherine hadn't noticed that her flirtations were directed specifically at Darcy. Well, she should be pleased with her answer.

"Darcy is very nice, Rose," she replies calmly, "but I do not wish to marry him. And I am very serious about my current courtship."

"But Kathy," Eliza interjects, "he's so, so…" Katherine raises an eyebrow, "rough." Katherine thinks about Jack and the way he'd pinned her up against the wall on Monday night and kissed her until her knees went weak. She fights down a blush. But then she thinks about him lying next to Carl, and the way he cradles her face, and the feeling of his arms around her.

"He's a hard worker, if that's what you mean," she smiles into her tea, "but he's the gentlest man I've ever known."

"Do you allow him to kiss you?" Clara, the youngest, pipes up. Cornelia, her elder sister, elbows the fifteen-year-old viciously, muttering angrily about impropriety.

Katherine just manages to smother a laugh. These girls, she knows, would be horrified if they knew just how often she, ahem, allowed Jack to kiss her. She just can't help it, it's delicious somehow, both the way he tastes and the illicitness of it all. It's fun for her, after he leaves her breathless, to think about what her father would say if he could see her. Though her world is whirlwind of parties and dress fittings, it's a world when light touches are reserved for engaged couples and more serious ones for the privacy of a married couple's own home. Oh, Jack regularly assures her that he'll stop whenever she wants him to, that he's not trying to take advantage, and he's a man of his word, shying away from even letting his thumb brush along the seam of her corset through her blouse. But kissing Jack, no, Jack himself, he makes her feel like she can fly, fills her with a warmth that seeps into her bones and settles there, deep inside, and doesn't dissipate for days. And he's so very physically affectionate, she should have known that by his constant roughhousing with the other boys and the way in which he sits the littlest newsies on his lap to tell them bedtime stories. Maybe it's the artist in him, his intense tactility, the way he likes to keep a protective arm around her waist or his fingers intertwined with hers and the way he looks vaguely bereft if ever she pulls away. He doesn't belong in her world, yet he's somehow too precious for it.

"I do." Clara looks admiring, Cornelia horrified.

"But you aren't engaged!"

"What about a chaperone?"

"What kind of gentleman does that make him?"

"He's very good at it." Katherine says coolly, finishing the last of her tea and rising to her feet amongst stunned expressions. "It's been a pleasure, ladies, but I really must be going now. Thank you for the tea, Eliza, it was delicious."

How dare they? Katherine fumes, stomping her way to the lodgehouse. Eventually, however, she slows, the footfalls of her polished boots growing lighter. _I should be pitying them._ She has Jack, and what do they have? They had their beaus with their jobs in the stock markets, with nothing to look forward to other than giving their husbands heirs, and nothing to fill their days but drinking tea and ordering new dresses. When she gets there, Race opens the door.

"Hey, Princess, nice to see you 'gain."

"Nice to see you too, Race." She replies, rolling her eyes at the nickname. "Papes selling well today?"

"You bet. There's a load o' race troubles down in McIntosh County and they's reckonin' on a big scrum there soon. Every toff in the city wants to hear 'bout it." He grins around his cigar. "You lookin' for Jack?" She nods. "He's over at Medda's, headed straight over there after he finished sellin' his papes. Wan' me to walk you over?"

"It's fine, thank you – wait, Jack's been selling papers? Wasn't he doing his illustrations?"

"You kiddin'?" Race snorts. "Jack ain't stopped sellin' papes just 'cos he's got some fancy office job. He does his illustratin' in the evenins. He's not gone all high 'nd mighty on us." Katherine nods slowly.

"Thanks, Race, I'll see you around."

"See you, Princess!" He shuts the door and Katherine just stands there.

The amount of drawings he does for The World, there must be at least six or seven a day, easily. (And yes, she does always buy a copy from one of the newsies and cut out his drawings, because she's proud of him, okay?) That's a full-time job. So how on earth is he spending a full day selling papers and illustrating all night?

…

"Katherine! How nice to see you again!" Medda greets her with a bone-crushing hug. Sometimes Katherine feels better with Medda than she does with her own mother. Especially at the moment, as she hasn't yet quite been forgiven for not being home on time for dinner on Monday evening.

"Very well, Miss Medda, how are you?"

"Oh I'm doin' just fine, honey, just fine. I'm guessin' you're lookin' for that Jack of yours?" Katherine blushes, nodding. "He's just through there, dear, and makin' a fine job of those new set pieces, so don't you go distractin' him for too long, now."

"I won't, Miss Medda." She calls over her shoulder, heading into the darkened theatre.

There are only a couple of stage lights on, illuminating a mountain landscape. The great grey rocks rise up from earth, earth so realistic she can almost smell it: green and fresh from the first rains of summer, cutting the cerulean sky off from the sweeping plains below. The cliffs themselves are dotted with impressionistic white that, from the back of the auditorium, she could swear are edelweiss. In front of it, halfway up a stepladder, is Jack, leaning across to put the finishing touches on a fluffy white cloud. He never ceases to amaze her, the places he's never been to that he dreams into being. Sometimes, when he's in one of his black moods, or, more often, when he hides behind a charismatic mask, his art is her only window into his head. Even then, it feels as though she's peeping through a keyhole into a whole mansion. There's so much inside of him that he refuses to show her, that she's reminded of every time she reaches out for him when he isn't expecting it and he flinches away.

It's warm in the theatre, the August heat somehow held captive in the red velvet of the seats, just as the audience hold their breath as the overture begins. And what a show it is. The mountain landscape is beautiful, all of Jack's work is, but that isn't what Katherine is admiring. It's warm and so off has come Jack's shirt, draped over the table covered with paint cans, and he's there is just his sleeveless cotton undershirt and – how has she never noticed his arms before? Her eyes trail down the arm that's steadying him on the ladder, raking over the tight muscle and toned forearms and – she needs to get a grip.

"Hey," she calls softly as she walks through the rows of seats toward the stage. Jack swings around on the ladder and squints out into the darkened auditorium, shading his eyes from the bright stage lights.

"Ace!" He grins, spotting her. "I ain't expectin' seein' you here. To what do I owe the honour?"

He hops down from his perch and grabs a grey rag, spattered with various shades of paint, from the table beside him to wipe his hands. She watches his fingers, the way they seem to dance even as he haphazardly swipes at them with the rag.

"Bad day." She sighs as he slides off the edge of the stage and loosely wraps his arms around her waist. She knows she should ask him straightaway, but she just can't help leaning into him and resting her head on his chest.

"You was, uh," Jack wracks his brains for what she had told him she was doing that day as he fights the urge to fall backwards – he can barely keep himself standing today, never mind Katherine as well, "oh, you was havin' tea with Eliza. Surely it ain't been that bad – free food, 'ey?"

"It was that bad." She sighs, gently breaking away from him. "And then I dropped by the lodgehouse to find you and I spoke to Race."

"Huh." Jack nods slowly, unsure of where she's going with this.

"And he says that you're still selling papes full time."

"Ah."

"Would you care to explain what's going on?"

"Is 'no' an answer you's gonna accept?" Jack grins nervously and Katherine shoots him a look. "Alright, alright." He puts his hands up in mock surrender. "Your father, he said, well, he said that he didn't want me hangin' round the office clutterin' up the place. So he says, jus' drop in each evenin' and hand over the drawins' and then he'll tell me what he needs next. So I figures, great, I's can still spend the days sellin' papes and helpin' the boys out, and then I's just gonna do my drawin' in the evenins."

"Jack, you deserve to be in that office with the rest of the illustrators. You're twenty times better than all of them-" Katherine grits out, trying not to explode at Jack for something that's her father's fault.

"Seriously, Ace, it's fine, I ain't botherin'." He's eerily calm.

"But you should be bothering! And I'm bothering because you didn't tell me!"

"I didn't tell you 'cos I knew you'd go off at your father! You two argues enough, I ain't goin' to try an' make it worse. 'Sides, Miss _Plumber,_ you're hardly one to talk 'bout not tellin' folks things."

"Don't you bring that up!" She snaps pointing an accusatory finger at him. "You know I did nothing wrong!"

"Then neither did I!" He throws his arms wide.

"That was different!"

"Oh yeah? How?"

"I wasn't your girl then. I didn't owe you anything. We need to be honest with each other."

Jack's scowl morphs into a slow, dreamy sort of smile. Crutchie, Katherine thinks, would have called it his Santa Fe smile.

"You's sayin' you're my girl?"

"Really?" She huffs. "That's what you're taking from this?"

"Hey, you said it." He shrugs, looking far more smug than he has any right to.

"Yes, Jack Kelly, I am your girl."

"Say it again." He closes the gap between them, just by a step, but she already feels warm. His hands, on her waist. Heat rises into her cheeks.

"You're an idiot." She closes her eyes so she doesn't have to look at him. She knows if she sees his smug smile she'll just fall in love with him all over again.

"Yeah, but I's an idiot with a _girl_." He pulls her into a hug, her face pressed into his chest and she breathes him in, paint and smoke and ink.

She can't bring herself to care whether or not he's covering her clothes in paint and she places her hands on his sides so that she can know that he's there, so that if she presses her fingers there she can feel the way his muscles jump beneath his skin and know that he's here and he's alive and he's okay. But when she presses, she can feel his ribs, pick them out individually, and though his muscles are there, she starts to worry whether or not he's more cold bone than warm muscle nowadays.

"You know," he rumbles, "I's happy not bein' in that office. I wouldn'ta fitted in anyhow, and this way I can keep helpin' the boys. 'S more money, too, for our future."

She means to ask him, she does, she means to ask about the way he feels under his clothes, about how many hours he's drawing into the night, about whether he's actually sleeping at all. She does. But then-

"Our future?" She blinks up at him.

"Hell, that came out wrong-" Jack winces.

"What does our future look like?"

"Oh, uh," Jack frowns, taken aback, "well, I's savin' for a house, I guess."

"Yeah?" She nuzzles her face back into his chest, silently begging for him to continue.

"Wi' room for some kids."

"How many?"

"How many d'ya want?"

"Three."

"I'll have to do plenty more savin' if we want to get all three o' them a proper education."

"And give them lots of birthday presents."

Jack hums contentedly, his fingers, rough from years of fighting and cold weather, combing slowly through her hair, separating the strands and deftly detangling the knots it had tied itself into in the wind.

"Can you make cake?"

"Eh?" Jack leans away from her, looking down, perturbed.

"I've never made a cake, I don't know how." She sighs. "I don't want to get them a shop bought cake. I always had those growing up and I was always jealous of the girls whose mothers spent all day making them a cake."

"I ain't never made a cake, Ace, but you's bright enough, I's sure you'll figure it out. 'Sides, I's sure they'll be grateful for any kinda cake. I ain't never had any, so I's sure it's a rare enough thing that it'll be excitin' no matter who made it."

"You've never had cake?"

"It's not exactly staple diet for most newsies, sweetheart." He laughs, but she knows she has got under his skin as he pulls away.

Jack hefts himself up onto the wooden stage. _Boys,_ Katherine shakes her head, sighing as he ignores the set of steps just a few feet to the left.

"Well, no," she blushes, shooting him an apologetic glance, "but – when's your birthday, my love?"

He shrugs non-commitally, replacing the lids on his cans of paint and whacking them with his elbow to force the rusting metal to seal once more.

"Don't do that, my love, you'll hurt yourself." She hops up the steps and gently takes the paint can from his hands. "And this," she pulls an over-exaggerated grouchy expression and shrugs roughly, "funnily enough, is not a date."

He can't help but smile a little at her impression of him, poor as it is, poor as it always is, whether it's his physicality or his broad accent.

"I dunno when my birthday is." He says, all quiet.

"How can you not know when your birthday is?"

"Hell, Ace, it ain't like we ever celebrated it when I was a kid!" He snaps, then softens as she blinks, tears rushing to well in her eyes. He shrugs, softly this time, turning away to put another lid back on. "The nuns are kickin' me outta the lodgehouse at the end o' September, so's I figure it's sometime 'round then."

He's pulled that curtain around his features again, so she drops it. She's learned this the hard way and she still doesn't get it quite right, when to push him. Sometimes it's okay, a kind of pain he needs, that will leave him more whole at the end, like pressing on a bruise, but other times it's the final lash of the whip across his back. Immediately, her writer's brain feels guilty for the comparison. She's seen his scars, just once, two weeks after the strike when he'd done his shoulder in falling off the same stepladder as he's on today. She'd sat behind him and dug her fingers into the knotted muscle as he groaned, freeing the trapped nerve, and his loose collar had slipped just a little too low, exposing white lines snaking across the tan flesh of his back, the skin around them slightly discoloured as if they hadn't quite healed right. When he'd heard her gasp, he'd sprung away from her. She knows his shoulder is still bothering him, she can see him clenching and unclenching his fist now, having jarred it by forcing the paint lid back on, but he hasn't let her touch it since.

"Your shoulder-"

"I's fine, Ace." He looks up from the table and shoots her a quick smile. "Hey, Miss Medda!"

Just like that, he looks past her. She can't bear it somehow, how they're always interrupted. She knows it's her fault as much as his, he has to work around her work schedule as well. But she doesn't want to share him, she wants him all to herself, just for a few hours, a few hours when he isn't thinking about the boys' next meal or her father's illustrations. Perhaps, perhaps, when her parents go on holiday and she makes the excuse that she has to work, maybe she could invite him in, have him be a welcome presence in the Pulitzer mansion for the first time in his life. Perhaps she could drag him up to her bedroom and lay down with him and force him to get a full night's sleep, then wake up next to him. Perhaps.

"Hey, sweetie, you eaten yet today?" Medda calls as she sways down the aisle between the seats, carrying what looks like a tray.

"Sure I has." Jack calls back, but Katherine doesn't miss the vaguely guilty sideways glance he shoots her as he does so. She opens her mouth, but Medda is quicker.

"Let me rephrase that," the older woman smiles, emerging into the sphere of stage light holding a tray with three sandwiches and a jug of apple juice, "have you eaten anything since before six this morning?"

Jack grimaces, rubbing at the back of his neck. Medda, triumphant, thrusts the tray at him.

"Medda, I-"

"I can't sell them tonight anyway, Jack, they're yesterday's batch, so unless you eat them they're going in the garbage."

Jack looks down at the tray on the edge of the stage. The sandwiches are fluffy triangles of white bread, with real butter, the kind made from proper milk from proper cows, not just the white sort of lard he's used to, and ham in the middle. He knows, he's absolutely certain, that Medda made them less than five minutes ago, but her excuse is enough to soothe his pride and he mumbles his thanks. He heads over to them quicker than his statement of already eating should have led him to, but he stills his hand – looking up at Katherine, silently questioning if she wants one. Her glare is enough for him to pick up the tray with one hand and obediently stuff a sandwich into his mouth with the other. As Medda turns to leave the auditorium, he takes the remaining two and carefully folds them in his blue shirt that is still laying on the table. Feeling Katherine's eyes on him, he hunches his shoulders defensively.

"Specs got the arm snapped off his specs last week," he grumbles, "he won't lemme pay for 'em, so the more he ain't gotta spend on food, quicker he gets hisself a new pair."


	3. Chapter 3

"Ah, hell!" Jack curses under his breath, scrabbling to collect all the scraps of paper and pencils strewn across the roof as the first drops of rain start to streak grey lines across the page.

By the time he's halfway down the fire escape, his candle has been extinguished and the rain is falling faster, fat raindrops bouncing off the corrugated steps. He hops through the window, stowing his drawings safely on the floor, then fumbles with a match to reignite the candle. In its flickering 2am light, he can see rows of boys in bunks, the soft grumbles of snuffling and snoring soothing and rhythmic. Overhead, thunder rumbles, an exaggerated version of the rumblings of the thirty empty stomachs around him. It's too hot to close the window – well, not hot exactly, but thick and muggy, like the world is holding its breath like an audience in the gods, waiting, somehow, for something, something immense and – there. Lightning forks across the sky, illuminating the drawing in Jack's fingers and making the grey streaks of damp pencil strokes that mar the page all too obvious.

Jack curses once more and screws the drawing into a ball, throwing it to the ground. There goes the past two hours of work. With a heavy sigh, he settles himself on the window's wide, low sill and takes up a fresh piece of paper. He's running low, he'll need to buy more soon. He wonders whether he'll manage with his pape selling money, or if he'll have to dig into his actual salary. His salary will get him an apartment now, once he has to leave the lodgehouse, if he doesn't dig into it too much. He ought to be looking for one, he knows, after all, it's less than a month until he has to move out. But looking for an apartment would make it real. The lodgehouse is cold and miserable and there's always some sort of infestation, whether it be cockroaches or rats, but it's home. It's where his brothers are. He knows, objectively, that they'll be okay without him – hell, he managed to grow up without anybody looking out for him – but he's just so worried. What if they get sick and don't have anybody to look after them? What if they get beaten up and nobody notices they're gone? What if-

"Jack?" He hears a soft grumble from behind him.

It's Crutchie, propped up on one elbow in bed, rubbing at his eyes. The kid was loyal, but even he had abandoned Jack on the roof when the air grew heavy with a burgeoning thunderstorm.

"Hey, Crutchie, it's fine, go back to sleep." Jack hums back. He can tell that Crutchie wants to question him further, but he's lucky tonight and the boy readjusts himself on the thin mattress, soon softly snoring once more.

Out the window, the thunderclouds, so dark Jack can't tell where they end and the inky night begins, have obscured the moon, so he brings his candle a little closer to his work. There, squinting through tired eyes in the candle's paltry light, he draws the first line.

…

Jack wakes up to someone calling his name and something vaguely squishy hitting him on the head. His eyes jerk open as he kicks out, but the only thing his foot connects with is the candle, now long since burnt out, which skitters to the floor. Heaving in breaths, he looks around. There are thirty pairs of eyes on him, filled with a mixture of horror and concern, despite Race's best efforts to shoo the youngest ones out of the dorm room. His boys. His brothers. His breathing slows.

"Jack." That was Crutchie's voice, yes, it was Crutchie who was calling his name, not an angry Snyder or a guard from the Refuge. _Just Crutchie._ "Jack, how you doin'?"

"Yeah," he gasps, "yeah, okay."

"You was screamin'." Jack nods at that. What else can he do?

Slowly, he uncurls himself, wincing as his spine twinges from hours lodged against the window frame. It's nothing though, compared to his dreams, when he feels the fire of the belt across his back incessantly.

"Was you dreamin' 'bout the Refuge again?" Crutchie's voice is a stage whisper.

The boys all know about his time in the Refuge – how could they not? He's practically legend there (was, Jack reminds himself, unsuccessfully seeking comfort in the knowledge that the place no longer exists) after word about him hijacking Roosevelt's carriage got out. Many of the boys even met him in the Refuge, when he smuggled them food, clothing, and blankets. And although he can count the number of times he's been in there on one hand, his hand is perhaps the only part of him that doesn't bear a scar as a result.

Jack grunts in response, rubbing at the back of his neck. Dwelling on the past never did him any good before. He bends down to gather his drawings and there, on top of them, is a balled up pair of white woollen socks – well, they might have been white, once, now they are more the colour of the boys' bathwater after they've all had a turn in the tub.

"Did you really jus' wake me up by throwin' your stinkin' socks at my head?" Jack holds them up, fixing Crutchie with a stare.

"Well, last time I woke you up from a nightmare you turned around and socked me in the mouth before I done anythin'. I was jus' returnin' the favour." Crutchie grins, a little sheepish. Rolling his eyes, Jack lobs the socks back at his friend who catches them neatly and smiles wide. He knows that's Jack and him okay again.

…

The rain hasn't stopped and, according to Crutchie's leg, it isn't going to anytime soon. The two of them are huddled in the doorway of a shut up pawnbrokers, backs flat against the door, its peeling paint leaving brown flakes on the backs of their shirts, to keep the ragged awning from dripping on them. It's unusual for them to sell together these days; after Jack had taken Crutchie under his wing and taught him how to sell papes he'd made the younger boy find his own selling spots – they both made more that way. Today, though, Crutchie's worried. Jack has nightmares every night, that's not unusual. The fact that Jack was avoiding sleep, on the other hand… and it is avoiding, Crutchie's sure. Yes, Jack cares about the boys enough to make extra money for them by selling papes, but if he wanted to he could sell them all in a couple of hours before heading back to the lodgehouse and working on his illustrations. No, Jack's avoiding sleep because he's afraid of the nightmares. He's done this before, usually just after leaving the Refuge but during the strike too. When everything else gets too overwhelming, so do the nightmares.

"Ah, screw this," Jack sighs, pulling off his cap and running a tired hand through his dark hair, lifting the damp curls from where they've been sticking to his forehead, "we ain't sellin' no more papes today."

"Maybe," Crutchie ventures, quietly, almost defeatedly hopeful, "but when they's all leavin' the office tonight-"

"Nah, it ain't happenin'." Jack shakes his head, fitting his cap back on and tugging it down around his ears. The stream of water running down the edge of the street locates the hole in the toe of his right boot and he shifts, grimacing at the resulting squelch. Against his stomach, beneath his shirt and waistcoat to protect them from the rain, his drawings crackle against his skin. "Look, I needs to take these sketches to The World, else they'll be soaked through. We'll get somethin' to eat on the way back, okay?"

Crutchie nods at that because, well, food, and they set off, hurrying through the rain with their caps pulled low over their eyes. By the time they get to the New York World building, the rain has soaked through the thick material of Jack's waistcoat and is beginning to seep through the thin blue cotton of his shirt. Nonetheless, the drawings are relatively unharmed (though he's starting to see why the rest of the men in the building carry briefcases) and Jack emerges into the rain once again with his money in one pocket and the next day's requirements in the other. He feels a little guilty handing the drawings over without getting Davey to check his spelling first, but if there's a misprint in the pape then, hey, that's the editor's fault, ain't it, Mr. Pulitzer?

As Jack emerges, Crutchie shoves himself to his feet from where he's leaning against the wall, attracting dirty looks for loitering in the eyesight of those wealthy enough to venture out into the rain with the knowledge that somebody else would be washing the dirt of New York City off their clothes that night. Jack shoots him a grin and flips him a coin worth more than Crutchie has ever held in his life.

"They's sellin' sandwiches down the street." He smirks. Jack has barely finished his sentence before Crutchie is off down the sidewalk faster than most people probably thought was possible with a bum leg.

Jack saunters along behind him, now free from worrying about water damage to his drawings and able to enjoy the warm rain falling from sunlight-tipped clouds. By the time he reaches the store, a gloriously scented delicatessen, Crutchie is coming out holding two brown paper bags.

"One pastrami on rye." Crutchie holds one of the bags out to him in triumph, but Jack just shakes his head.

"Save it for Henry, it's his favourite and I ain't hungry." He waves his hand dismissively.

"Jack, your stomach bein' empty don't fill nobody else's." Crutchie frowns. "Eat the damn sandwich."

Jack feels as though he's been punched in the gut. He supposes it's just association, that he's always known that the feeling of an empty stomach means the boys around him are fed. That deep gnawing feeling that almost doubles him over, it means that his brothers are taken care of. It means that he's doing his job. Except maybe it doesn't.

"You ain't sleepin'," Crutchie says, his face softening despite the hand holding out the sandwich remaining as firm and unwavering as ever, "don't starve yourself as well."

Silently, Jack takes the bag from him and they begin to meander back toward the lodgehouse. The sight of Crutchie devouring his sandwich is enough to convince Jack to take a begrudging bite of his own every few steps.

…

Jack shifts uncomfortably on the lumpy straw-filled mattress, glancing over at where his shirt is laid out to dry. Half the newsboys scattered across the room are in some state of undress – shirtless or wrapped in blankets as their clothes, strewn across the floor, dry out. Specs, in the corner, is whinging to nobody in particular about his glasses steaming up. Outside, the rain is still pounding. And here he is, laid on his front and squinting down at the latest requested illustration whilst Race smokes yet another of his infernal cigars beside him. It's a comfortable sort of companionable mumbling, voices blurring together as the younger boys flick their precious marbles across the floorboards and the older ones laze around, glad of the rest. And then it's disturbed.

In comes a Miss Katherine Pulizter, the hem of her long coat drooping and dripping with the weight of water. Albert, huddled in the corner devoid of both trousers and shirt due to having fallen in a large puddle on his way back to the lodgehouse, squeaks and yanks the blanket up over his chest, peering nervously over the top of it.

"Yeah, Albert, protect your modesty." Specs snickers.

As Katherine begins to undo the buttons of her coat, shaking her curly head to get rid of the water still clinging to her hair, the younger boys crowd round her, hugging her legs and telling her all about the new books they've been reading. Jack can't help but smile as he watches her, the way that she answers each one of them, assuring each one of her interest and attention. And then she turns her eyes to him and god help him if he doesn't feel just like an eight-year-old blossoming under her gaze as well.

"Jack," _oh, that smile,_ "may I speak with you please? In private."

Race has the cheek to wolf-whistle at that and is promptly shoved off the bed.

"Uh, sure." Jack gets up so quickly that he smacks his head on the slats of the bunk above, prompting another round of laughter from the boys around him. Hell, he looks whipped. Hell, he is whipped.

He inclines his head toward the kitchen and she heads in, him following. He doesn't miss the look she gives him before she does though, the way her eyes trail down across his bare chest and stomach, down the smattered trail of soft dark hair that leads her eye from his navel down to the waistband of his trousers. Inside, she turns to face him and, involuntarily, her eyes drop once more.

"My eyes are up here, sweetheart." He smirks and Katherine feels all the blood in her body inflame her cheeks.

"I have a present for you." She says, forcing herself to meet his eyes.

"Can I pick what it is?" He asks, his voice so deep it's almost a growl, as he advances and pins her up against the kitchen counter, one arm on either side of her, penning her in, and the look in his eyes positively predatory. "'Cos I didn't miss the way you was lookin' at me back there an' I's got a few ideas as to what I might like…" He drops his gaze to her lips, then back up to her eyes, wolfish.

"Later!" She manages to laugh, gently pushing at his chest, with more self-control than she knew she even possessed.

Defeated but smiling, Jack takes a step back in surrender. From inside her coat, Katherine produces a large brown envelope and holds it out.

"What is it?" Jack eyes the envelope suspiciously.

"A parrot." Katherine deadpans. At Jack's eyebrow raise, she takes a deep breath then spits out all her words in less than a second. "It's your birth certificate."

"My what?"

"Your birth certificate. Well, it's a copy that the man made for me. You said you didn't know when your birthday was, so I went to city hall and did some digging." She jerks it a little, extending it further towards him, urging him to take it. He stays perfectly still.

"Have you…" He looks between her and the envelope, his expression unreadable.

"No, I haven't read it. I thought you'd like to be the first." Katherine can feel a flush creeping up her neck as Jack remains stock still. _What is he thinking? Is he angry?_

"It- it'll have my ma's name on it, yeah?" There's something in his eyes – not quite nervousness, but something else.

"Yes, of course it will." What does that matter? Katherine wonders.

"You should read it."

"But-"

"I don't want to know, Katherine. You can read it if you'd like." Jack looks away, his voice firm, before chancing another look at her hurt expression. "No – ah, hell –" he curses, rubbing at the back of his neck, "it was real sweet o' you to do this, but my birthday ain't makin' no difference to me. An' I- I don't want to know who my ma was. I's the one that killed her, I don't want to think 'bout it."

"You killed her?" A curtain draws around his features once more at her horrified question and Katherine could kick herself. She doesn't know what to do when he shuts himself off like this.

"My old man, he always said it's my fault that she's gone. She got sick with the childbed fever an' she was gone 'fore I was a week old." His voice is monotonal and although he's looking at her, it feels more like he's looking through her.

"My love, that's not your fault – you were just a baby, you couldn't-"

"It's okay, Katherine, really." Jack shoots her a tight smile. "An' I 'preciate you doin' this, really, I do. Though you take some liberties, I'll tell you that much!" He laughs softly, shaking his head at her. He's trying, he's trying so hard, to keep his cool and not either punch the wall or burst into tears. He wants to scream at her for going through his stuff, just like he did that night up in the penthouse when she found his drawings of the Refuge, and at the same time he feels the urge to drop to his knees and sob into her skirts. He knows, of course he does, that she means well, and that's the only thing keeping him sane. She smiles at him, a little teary, then looks down, obviously burning with curiosity. "You can look, if you want."

He fights back bitterness as he says it. She looks up at him, a question in her eyes, but he just shrugs, hand flying up to the back of his neck again. Katherine tears open the envelope and her eyes scan the thick card.

"Jack." She says slowly. "How old are you?"

"Shucks, sweetheart, you's the one wi' my birth certificate. Ain't those fancy schools helped your calculatin'?" He laughs awkwardly.

"Jack."

"Well, I's eighteen this month, 'ccording to the nuns as run this place." He shrugs.

"Which would mean you were born in '81, right?"

"You's the one who's good at math."

"Jack, this says you were born on the 28th of September, 1880." Katherine states, her voice strangely calm.

"Wait, what?" Jack's eyes shoot up from where they've been unusually fascinated by the dirt-filled cracks between the floor tiles.

"You're turning nineteen."

"Where did that extra year come from?" He laughs, half disbelieving. "I'm a year older than I thought I was. That can't be right- wait, I'm older than you!"

"You are." Eighteen-year-old Katherine remains in a state of shock.

"I have so many jokes about older men that I's just dyin' to make but I don't want to get slapped." Jack says, a dopey grin spreading across his face.

"This is your reaction?" _Unbelievable,_ Katherine thinks.

"So's I's a year older. Big deal. I ain't celebratin' my birthday anyways, so why's it matter?"

"It matters because-" Katherine stops herself, breathes, thinks, "are you happy, the way things are?"

It's taken her the month since the strike to realise that sometimes Jack just brushes things off his shoulder like this. It's always the things she doesn't expect, as well. Sure, he doesn't care that he's a year older than he always thought he was and doesn't care to find out his own mother's name, but one wrong word from her about the way he speaks or acts and he's in a black mood for the rest of the day.

"It'll take a bit o' gettin' used to, but I's okay wi' that. Are you okay with that?" Jack looks surprised that she's hanging back so much on the issue.

She's not okay, of course she's not, because this is big and strange and she wants to dig into it. But Jack doesn't. And he's here, just taking it all in his stride just like he always does. And if he's happy, then she'll just have to be happy too.

"Yeah." She nods decisively. "It doesn't change how I feel about you."

He smiles at that and Katherine puffs up with pride. Finally, finally, she's said the right thing. They stand there in silence, the only noise the regular drip, drip, of Katherine's wet things on the cracked floor tiles.

"You's shiverin'."

"I'm just a little damp."

"I'll go find you my sweater. Don't want you catchin' cold."

Jack turns and she can't help but gasp. He stops, breathes in through his nose. He'd forgotten about this. It happened, of course, every time one of the new kids arrived at the lodgehouse. To them, though, it was cool. Somehow, he doesn't imagine Katherine having quite that reaction. He doesn't turn around right away, letting her eyes roam across the taut muscles of his back, hidden behind the crosshatch of white stripes stretching across him. They're jagged, these scars, healed only by time and salt water, not stitches and bandages. And there are hundreds of them, weaving around the circular imprints of old cigarette burns.

He only just manages to stay still when he feels her cool fingers trace along one of the scars, though his muscles involuntarily jump under her touch.

"I ain't quite as pretty as you, huh?" He scoffs a little, lowering his head.

He wants to see her face, find out whether she's as disgusted as he knows she has every right to be, but he can't bring himself to turn around and face her. Her fingers disappear from his skin and he prepares himself for the worst. Then her arms snake around his middle and squeeze, just gently.

"You're the most beautiful man I've ever seen." The words are quiet and fierce and Jack doesn't quite know how to respond to them. He knows that he isn't beautiful and knows that it's a word for girls, but his shoulders relax anyway. "When you're ready," she continues, more softly, "I want to hear the stories behind them, if you'll tell me." He nods slowly.

"Not today, sweetheart." He puts his hands on top of hers, trapping them against his stomach. "I's had enough of my past today."

"But someday?"

"Someday." He confirms, squeezing her hands quickly before easing himself out of her embrace and walking back into the dorm to grab his sweater.

When he returns, he's wearing his shirt, the buttons all in the wrong holes. She laughs at him, walking over and carefully fixing him up with fingers both sure and trembling, finshing it with a quick peck of his lips. Looking down at her, Jack wants to bottle this moment and save it. He knows that it would do him more good to drink in this moment on a dark night than a whole bottle of whiskey. Her green eyes, bold and twinkling, under lashes diamond-studded with tiny droplets of water, looking up at him as if he had made her whole world. Her damp hair, brushing his bare forearm. Her.

But it can't last. Before he can stop himself, he's holding out the dark green knitted jumper. It has a hole under each arm and one on the right elbow, and there's a moth-eaten patch at the bottom hem, but it's by no means unwearable, at least by his standards. He turns his back as Katherine takes off her blouse and pulls on his sweater and he doesn't even peek, though, hell, how he wants to.

It's worth the wait when he does turn around – they both laugh at the sleeves drooping uselessly way past the end of Katherine's arms and the odd way it hangs on her small frame. He knows it's definitely the oldest and rattiest item of clothing that she's ever worn and wants to hide his face in shame that he doesn't have some sort of silken robe to give her. Nonetheless, when she leaves to go home for dinner, she asks, blushing, to keep it because it smells like him. (And doesn't he feel like falling over when she says it like that.) Jack tells her it suits her better than him. He's telling her the truth.

When Katherine gets home, she rushes upstairs and hides it under her pillow, only for her to take it out and bury her face in it as she drifts off to sleep that night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know that Jack was born in '82 according to canon, but it doesn't say that in the musical so this is theoretically plausible, don't @ me.


	4. Chapter 4

Jack wakes up drenched in sweat and praying that he hasn't been screaming (or if he has, at least that it wasn't loud enough to wake up Crutchie). He knows that he should have made Crutchie go and sleep with the boys downstairs when that last half a mattress had opened up after one of the older boys had aged out, but the kid just wanted to be with him constantly, who knows why. Jack has never quite figured that one out, especially when he wakes Crutchie up every other night with his screams. If he was Crutchie, he'd be running – well, limping – in the opposite direction as fast as he could.

Tonight isn't a screaming night, but it's a bad one. He breathes in deeply, savouring the night air, cleaner somehow than the smoggy streets he walks each day. A few deep breaths. Calming breaths. Breaths of air that aren't heavy with blood and urine, like the dream world he has come from. He isn't in the Refuge, he reminds himself, and he will never be again. He won't ever taste his own blood in the air again, sharp and metallic like pennies on his tongue, or feel the smell of it crusting inside his nose. He won't feel that pain again.

"Hell." Jack mutters, pushing balled fists against closed eyes.

He stands up and shrugs on his blue overshirt, roughly at first but then remembering himself and moving as delicately as possible (well, for a teenage boy). The material is thinning at the elbows, all half-frayed cotton, and he knows that one wrong move and he'll tear it. If he wants to have someplace to move to at the end of the month, he can't afford to be buying himself a new shirt.

Jack steps over the sleeping bundle of blankets more commonly known as Crutchie and swings down the fire escape, silent. He doesn't know where he's going, but even on the roof he feels claustrophobic, like even the open space is pressing in on him, trapping him, suffocating him. He needs to move.

Out on the street, New York is quiet. Hoofbeats in the distance, some late-night cabbie plying his wares, are the only sound. Even the leather soles of his boots, softened through wear, seem unbearably loud against the cobbles. He doesn't pick a direction so much as he just lets his feet take him, carrying him to somewhere. He just needs to not think. It's easier, down here on the street, to forget about the Refuge. Though some of the younger boys are afraid of the dark, Jack isn't. He never has been. Darkness is useful, the shadowy streets are home. They hide him. Darkness has never let him down before, has always allowed him to escape. The short-sighted Snyder had never spotted him in the dark.

He realises, nigh on twenty minutes later, somewhat soothed by the dark streets, that he's walking toward Katherine's house. Her house could swallow up every house (or room, or shop doorway, or bench) that Jack has ever called home, and still have room for dessert. Red brick, fresh white paint, cast iron railings; the home of the Pulitzers might as well be the Taj Mahal for all that Jack knows about it. One thing he does know, however, is that he doesn't belong here. This is the good part of town, the nice part, where neighbours gossip about the shine on one's front doorstep and the lace on the gowns at the last debutante ball, not whether the girl two doors down has started whoring herself out again to feed her younger siblings. This is the part of town where the suffragettes feel safe abandoning their chaperones and walking alone down the street. The other thing that Jack knows about this part of town is where exactly Katherine Pulitzer's window is.

He scales the cast iron fence that wraps around the side of the house without much trouble and lands, crouched and cat-like, on the other side, wincing at the crunch that the gravel path makes under his feet. Snatching up a couple of pebbles from the path, he gently tosses them, one after another, at the window pane, praying that the glass is strong. He's about to bend down for a second handful when the white sash window slides up and open, a mess of auburn curls appearing in its place.

"What are you doing?" Katherine hisses down.

"Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!" He grins up at her, adjusting his cap to its usual jaunty angle. There's a slight smile just tugging at the corner of her mouth and Jack knows he's won. It doesn't matter how mad she pretends to be, he can see straight through it.

"For Pete's sake, Jack, do you really think it's a good idea to go around playing Romeo in the middle of the night?" He can hear the smile in her voice through her exasperation.

"Why you talkin' 'bout Romeo?" Jack's brow furrows. "He's sleepin' back at the lodgin' house."

"No, you goof," Katherine shakes her curly head, "Romeo from Shakespeare – never mind."

There's a trellis supporting the Virginia creeper that winds its way up the wall just next to Katherine's window. _Honestly,_ Jack thinks, _it's like somebody wants me to get up there. In seconds, he's halfway up the wall._

"I's heard of Shakespeare – oof," Jack hefts himself up to sit on the wide outer ledge of her window, "but I ain't never read none. Not all of us got to go to fancy finishin' school, you know." It's an offhand comment but Katherine bites her lip, guilt welling in her eyes. She never means to make Jack feel stupid – he's not, she knows he's not – but her world and his… there's just no comparing them.

"Wait there." She slips away from the window and out through her bedroom door, bare feet padding silently across polished wooden floorboards.

Jack is left wondering whether he did something wrong, whether he is pushing her boundaries a little too far. But she had seemed pleased to see him, if a little exasperated. She reappears and Jack has to stifle his intake of breath. She's only in her nightgown. _What did you expect, idiot?_ He chastises himself. _It's the middle of the night!_ Still, he's only ever seen her covered up, all wrapped in layers of petticoats and firmly boned corsetry. He's only ever seen her hands and her face uncovered, those are the only parts of her he's really touched, crook of her elbow and a faint brush of fingertips across her waist aside. She has so much skin, skin that slips beneath thin white fabric – thin white fabric that's all between his hands, his lips, and her body. She looks so _soft_. Jack shifts uncomfortably.

She looks soft – oh so soft and beautiful. How could he even think of touching her? He doesn't deserve her when she's all buttoned up and prim, never mind when she's like this. He's pretty sure that if he was to reach out and touch her now, she would shatter like a china doll under his heavy, calloused hands.

Katherine, oblivious, walks over and holds out a book. It's bound in red leather, embossed with gold. Jack knows he could sell a thousand papes and still not come close to being able to afford it. _Romeo & Juliet,_ it says, _William Shakespeare._

"Give it a try, let me know what you think."

"Ace… you sure? This, well, this book clearly ain't cheap."

"I'm sure you'll take good care of it." Katherine smiles, pressing the book more firmly into his hands. Reluctantly, he leans it against his side. "Now," she presses, "do you want to tell me why you're here?"

"Couldn't sleep." Jack shrugs dismissively.

"That's not like you." Katherine frowns. _Oh, if only she knew._ "You're always tired."

"Dunno," he looks away, "just wantin' to see you. Make sure you're alright. You knows how it is."

"Well," she perches on the inside window ledge, "that's very sweet. But there are better ways to call on a lady, you know." She laughs softly, shaking her head. "Jack Kelly, I swear-"

"Don't swear, Ace, it ain't ladylike." He grins.

"Neither is allowing a strange boy to climb in my bedroom window in the middle of the night while wearing nothing but my nightgown."

"Who said anythin' 'bout climbin' in? I's can kiss you just as well from here."

Jack reaches out for her, cupping her face in his hand, callouses brushing skin that feels like cotton. He takes her leaning to nuzzle into his hand, the way that she closes her eyes and parts her lips a little, as invitation enough. His thumb brushes along the line of her jaw, barely skimming the surface of her skin. He's admiring her, wondering to himself quite how he has this perfect woman sat here, in front of him, smelling of honey and ink.

When he kisses her, it's soft, a pepper of feathery kisses from the corner of her mouth until he's fully on her lips. It's Katherine who deepens it to something darker, less innocent, less like children playing out of the sight of their parents. Jack isn't about to say no, though. When she breaks away, lips swollen and face flushed, Jack continues, leaning in close to nip at her ear, then kiss down, tracing her jawline, her neck, with chapped lips.

"We should stop…" Even as she says it, Katherine tilts her head back and keens toward him.

"Should we, now?" Jack flashes her a grin between the bruising kisses he's pressing along her collar bone. There's something dark in his eyes, pupils blown wide, wider than they should be in the bright light of the moon.

"Yes," she groans, gently pushing his head away, resisting the urge to tangle her fingers in his dark curls, "we need to stop, or I shan't be fit to be seen in my evening gown."

"What'chu need a different gown in the evenin' for?" Jack nuzzles his face back into the crook of her neck, though he mercifully gives her delicate skin respite from the nipping of his teeth. "I think you look mighty fine in your everyday clothes. 'Specially that blouse with the white lace."

"Since when do you take notice of my clothes, Kelly?"

"Since I's been wantin' to takes 'em off o' you?"

"Jack!" She shoves him, half playful, half outraged.

Jack grins, catching his wobble by gripping the window frame a little more firmly, determined not to fall from his perch.

"Careful, Ace, you wouldn't want ta' ruin my pretty face, now, would you?"

"If it'd deflate your ego a bit…" she trails off, a smirk gracing her lips. Her red, bee-stung lips, all swollen from his kisses… Jack shakes his head lightly, as if trying to shake out all of the many, many, depraved dreams he's had about a certain Katherine Pulitzer.

"You knows I's only jokin', right, Katherine?" He looks down, suddenly a little uncertain. "Sure, I's can't get enough o' just lookin' at you, but I don't want to – well, I do want to, but, what I's meanin' is, sorta, I just ain't tryna get you in trouble. I wants - I wants to take care of you, and it ain't lookin' great now, I know, but I's saving up near half my wages and I'll be doin' alright for myself soon an-"

Jack finds, then, that there's a hand on the back of his neck and it's pulling him to her lips. It doesn't take him long to recover, though, and he's kissing her, drinking her up like he's been wandering the desert. When they break away, breathless, and Jack rests his forehead against hers, she says it.

"I love you too." His eyes, previously downturned, snap to meet hers. "You don't have to say it yet, I know it's something big for you, that love isn't something you take lightly, but I want you to know."

He looks at her for a long, lingering moment and she isn't quite sure whether he's just going to turn around and leave.

"Fer sure?" His voice is barely above a whisper. A smile spreads over her face as she lowers her voice and puts on her best (worst) New York accent.

"Fer sure."

It's then that they hear the creak of floorboards in the corridor outside Katherine's room. They look at one another and Katherine doesn't have to say a word for Jack to silently slip off the outside window ledge and back out into the night. Just seconds later, the door opens as Katherine frantically tries to rearrange her nightgown so that the evidence of Jack's kisses, blooming purple across her collarbone, aren't quite so obvious.

"Katherine?" The figure in the doorway squints into the darkened bedroom, lifting his candle higher to cast a little more light.

"Father?" Katherine does her damnedest to sound like she hasn't just been kissed to within an inch of her life and fails miserably, the word coming out as a hoarse whisper.

"What are you doing up at this hour? I thought I heard voices."

"Just me talking to myself, Father. Planning out that next article, you know." She surprises even herself with how smoothly she lies.

Joseph Pulitzer frowns, the lines on his already aging face creasing into canyons. Whether this is in disbelief or a result of his derision regarding Katherine's life choices, she can't tell. Either way, he nods tightly and wishes her goodnight.

When she puts her head back out the window to see Jack, he's disappeared into the New York night.

…

It's almost light by the time Jack gets back to the lodgehouse. It's only September after all, and the leaves have barely started to fall from the trees, though they're turning more orange by the minute, almost as if he can feel their crackling, aging lives slipping in between his fingers. In the pale half-light of the early hours, it's hard to believe that New York is the same city that will soon be bustling with newsies and businessmen.

The lodgehouse door is locked, but the boys always leave the windows open while they sleep in summer, else the air gets too heavy with the sweat of bodies piled close together. He slips in through the window, checking quickly that he hasn't disturbed the snuffling and snoring of the younger boys, before he pads up the stairs, ready to slip through the upstairs dormitory and out to his penthouse.

"Jack?"

The voice comes from the darkness at the top of the stairs. Jack nearly falls backwards. He squints up, letting his eyes adjust until he can see a hazy silhouette of a boy on the top step.

"Hell, Race, way ta' gimme a heart attack!" Jack hisses through a cloud of cigar smoke, clutching at his chest slightly melodramatically.

"Where you been?" The blonde boy asks, unperturbed, pulling the cigar from the corner of his mouth and breathing out, long and slow.

"None o' your damn business." It's almost a snarl.

"Nightmares?" Race frowns.

"When ain't I havin' nightmares?" Jack shrugs, mounting the steps and trying to step over the boy.

Though Race is only two years younger than Jack, he's significantly scrawnier. (That, plus a wide cheeky grin, makes him one of Jack's only true rivals.) Despite this, Race catches Jack's lower leg in his hand, stopping the older boy in his tracks, and looks up at him, wide eyed and meaningful.

"You knows, Jack, if you's wantin' to talk-"

"Talkin' don't do nothin', Racer, and you knows it." Jack snaps. Race knows he's lost and drops his hand from Jack's leg. With it drops Jack's façade, his face softening, his tone good-natured, if a little exasperated. "Whaddaya want anyways? Can't a guy get to his bed no more?"

"You thought 'bout what you's gonna do once you's outta this place?"

"The lodgehouse?" Jack asks, looking down at him.

"No, your own ass." Race rolls his eyes, gently punching Jack's leg. "'Course the lodgehouse."

"I'll get an apartment, I guess." He shrugs.

"I's real glad for you." Race smiles a small smile, the only spark in his eyes the reflection of moisture at the corners where his laughter lines are already peeking out.

"I'd rather be 'ere." Jack sighs, turning and dropping down to sit on the top step beside Race, elbowing the younger boy out of his way.

"I'll swap with you any day, mister muckety-muck wi' your fancy 'partment." It's almost supposed to be a joke.

"That's not what I meant-"

"I knows." A pause. "I'd rather you was 'ere too."

"I'll come back." Jack says, quiet.

"Will you?"

"Course I's comin' back. Hell, Race, who do you thinks I am?" Jack looks up, firey panic in his eyes. "I ain't gonna ditch you just 'cos I's got a job an' a girl. Don't you know that we's a family?"

"I don't want this to be another Santa Fe." Race's voice is small, smaller than Jack's ever heard. Smaller, even than the night that Jack gave him his blanket in the Refuge.

Jack's back there in an instant, an eight-year-old Race a shivering bundle huddled on the precipice of the straw bale they called a mattress, back bruised from the vicious kicks of the two larger boys in the bed. Jack won't ever forget the look in Race's eyes when he silently passed him his own thin grey blanket to layer on top of the one he already had. He can see them even now when he closes his own wide and grateful and wary, because this older boy surely isn't putting up with the frigid February cellar air without expecting something in return, right?

"Santa Fe ain't all it's cracked up to be." Jack says, gazing straight ahead down the stairs. "I's got everythin' I needs right here."

Race socks him gently in the arm and Jack catches an arm around the other boy's shoulders, pulling him close and ruffling his hair. He stops, but Race doesn't pull away. Neither does Jack. The younger boys think it's strange sometimes, that though Jack flinches away from any unexpected touch, that he's so physically affectionate. But, the way Jack sees it, you've got to take what you can get. These people want to touch him in a way that doesn't hurt? By all means. It's funny what you find when you have nothing left.


	5. Chapter 5

Jack is exhausted. If it was any other book, no, strike that, if it was any other girl, he'd have settled down in this quiet corner of the lodgehouse (and isn't it a poor situation when the only quiet place he can find involves cramming all six feet of him into the linen cupboard) to go to sleep, not to read. But here he is. For the first time in a month, he's sold all of his Friday papers before lunchtime and got both Saturday and Sunday's illustrations done and delivered in the afternoon. He has the entire weekend (bar Sunday evening, when he'll go and pick up more work), to himself. And what is he choosing to do with it? Read William _bloody_ Shakespeare.

Jack doesn't know quite why he's putting so much effort into deciphering this _Romeo & Juliet_ nonsense. He thinks maybe it's because he doesn't want Katherine to think he's illiterate on top of everything else. He isn't illiterate. He just hasn't had much practice reading anything but papers for more than a decade now, and even then it's only the headlines. He can read the requests for his artwork from The World's editors just fine too, and when he takes his cartoons to Davey for him to proofread the other boy has only had to pull him up on his spelling once or twice. He's not stupid. He just isn't like Katherine.

The door to the linen cupboard is pulled open unceremoniously and Jack has to stifle a groan.

"Found him!" Race, the culprit, calls over his shoulder before turning back and looking down at where Jack is curled in the bottom of the linen cupboard in a nest of ratty towels and candle stubs. "What'cha readin', Jack?" Without waiting for an answer, Race plucks the book from his hands.

"Hey! I's readin' that!" Jack cries, sitting up from his position reclined against the wall and making a grab for the book.

"Ooooh _Romeo and Juliet_!" Race swings it out of Jack's reach, gleeful. "If you's lookin' for tips on how get Katherine to up to your penthouse you shoulda come to me, not Shakespeare-"

"Careful, Race." Jack points a stern finger in the other boy's face, standing up to pluck the book right back out of Race's hand where he's holding it aloft.

"C'mon Jacky-boy, you knows I'm only jokin'." Race grins.

"Yeah well," Jack rolls his shoulders back, setting his jaw, "it ain't none o' your business if Katherine lends me a book."

He sits down and pushes his nose firmly back into the book, yanking the cupboard door shut in the other boy's face. When he hears Race's footsteps creaking back down the corridor, indicating the abandonment of his crusade, Jack throws his head back and sighs heavily.

…

The best thing about sleeping in a cupboard, Jack realises the next morning, is not, in fact, the almighty crick in his neck or uncomfortable knot of muscle on the left side of his back. No, it's being able to get out early in the morning without having to sneak through the dormitory.

Autumn is coming to New York this morning. The leaves seem to have decided, in the space of one day since he took his midnight ramble, to abandon their former homes and stick to the cobbled streets. There's drizzle riding on the cold breeze that sweeps through the narrow alleyways as he heads toward the theatre. Not even lunchtime, and he's actually gone and done it. Unable to help himself, he dips his fingers into the pocket of his trousers, fingers groping until he finds it. One ring, four keys.

He jangles them at Medda when he arrives at the theatre and spends the afternoon getting covered in paint and grinning like a lunatic. Medda hugs him tight on his way out, pressing him to her bosom. Jack stops off at a bakery on the way back and buys a box of thirty doughnuts. He knows, of course, that his money would go far further on bread, maybe some meat or cheese. But hell, he wants to celebrate. These kids deserve a treat as much as the next lot.

The lodgehouse is pretty subdued when he arrives home, though many of the younger boys, sockless and shivering, run over to greet him. Home. How much longer would he call it that? The atmosphere becomes somewhat less subdued when he produces the doughnuts. He reminds them that they get one each, then pulls Crutchie and Race out and up to his penthouse.

"Whaddaya want, Jack?" Race grouches, pulling his thin jacket tighter around his shoulders. "If we ain't back soon there won't be no doughnuts left-"

"You'll get your doughnut, you idiot, now shuddup." Jack rolls his eyes with more confidence than he feels. "I've got a proper surprise for you."

He produces two keys from his pocket and solemnly presents one to each of them.

"I think he's finally cracked." Crutchie stage whispers to Race, grinning in confusion. Jack socks him in the arm gently enough that the other boy doesn't even wobble.

"I ain't cracked!" Jack cries. "They's for yous two. They's keys. To my apartment."

"You's actually got an apartment?" Crutchie's mouth drops open.

"Yeah," Jack grins, rubbing the back of his neck, "I took it this mornin'. The address is on the label." He nods toward Race's key, which the boy is holding as if it's made of glass. "So's you can come in. Anytime you wants to. You ever needs help, or one of the other boys, you comes there. I mean, I'll be back plenty-"

Jack is cut off by Race throwing himself at him. It's all Jack can do to keep himself upright as the younger boy threatens to squeeze the life out of him. When Race finally lets him go, roughly swiping at his eyes, he punches Jacks arm gently and tells him to shut up before walking off. Jack, absorbed in the sight of Race descending the fire escape, has almost forgotten that Crutchie is even there until he speaks.

"So you's really leavin', then, huh?" Jack's eyes snap over to his friend, but Crutchie doesn't meet his gaze, eyes focused instead on mapping every inch of the strangely twisted joint of his right foot.

"Sorta." Jack reaches out, a playful shove to Crutchie's shoulder that makes the younger boy finally meet his eyes. "See, I was thinkin'… this apartment. 'S got two bedrooms. An' heatin'. Wouldn't be half bad for that ol' leg you's got."

"You serious?" A slow, dopey grin spreads over Crutchie's face.

"You's my brother, ain't ya? It just ain't right if you ain't in the family 'ome wi' me." Jack grins, clapping Crutchie on the shoulder and wandering toward the fire escape before calling back over his shoulder. "We moves in on the first o' October."

…

The dining room is oppressively silent. Katherine has always hated this particular room in the house. Ornate fireplace, high plaster ceilings, mahogany table, it's all just so ostentatious.

The only sound is the rustling of the maids' long skirts as they delicately place china bowls before each member of the family. They start with her father, at the head of the table, then her mother, at the bottom. Then the children, boys first, the girls, in order of age. Katherine sits beside Ralph, her senior by two years, and opposite him, between Joseph Pulitzer's left hand and Herbert, not yet quite grown into his lanky frame at fifteen, is an empty seat. It, too, seems oppressive. Pregnant, somehow, weighed down, like the stuffy air of the dining room, by words hanging there, unsaid, hanging on spindles of glass from the ceiling.

"Katherine, are you reading Shakespeare again?" The spindles shatter. The words are carefully chosen; as an editor, Joseph Pulitzer understands the importance of the hand-picked word.

Katherine freezes, her spoon midway between her bowl and her lips. Ever so slowly, she replaces it in the china bowl, delicately patterned in tiny blue flowers, and folds her hands demurely in her lap. Can her father tell how itchy her palms are? Has he noticed her incessant glances toward the gold plated clock above the fireplace, taunting her with its slow-moving hands that count out the seconds before she can escape to spend the afternoon with Jack?

"I've been flicking through our copy of _Romeo & Juliet,_ Father. Why do you ask?" She looks up the long dining table toward her father, her eyes skimming the faces of her siblings as she fights to keep her cool.

"I merely noticed it was missing from my collection. I thought you didn't particularly enjoy Shakespeare? I recall one especially rousing tirade against his work which you wrote." Joseph Pulitzer chuckles. Katherine bristles.

"Well, a lot has changed since I was fourteen, Father." She replies, slightly more tersely than intended. "I thought I'd give it another try." _Nonchalant, yes, that's the way._ She picks up her spoon again. Opposite her, Constance and Edith sit, prim and proper with straight backs and flouncy dresses, waiting for the usual argument to break out between their eldest sister and their father.

"Admirable, my girl, admirable." It's all she can do to keep her mouth from dropping open. Had her father just complimented her? That hadn't happened since – well, since she started her career. "Speaking of giving things another try, I've invited the Brooks over for dinner next Thursday. Arthur, their son, has just come into quite some money from his late great aunt. Awfully pleasant young chap, good head on his shoulders. I know you've met him before, but I do believe you'd like him – he's twenty-four, so he'll be looking to get married soon and-"

_Of course._

"Father," Katherine says slowly – yes, she knows the importance of choosing her words just as well as he does, "you know that I'm stepping out with Jack. The Brooks are lovely people, from what I know of them, but please don't think that I'll be entertaining any sort of proposition from their son."

"Katherine", he grits out, his spoon clinking against his dish, Constance flinching, "I have been extremely patient with you, some might say too patient, but I will not entertain your ridiculous notions of-"

" _Ridiculous notions_?" She throws down her cutlery, metal hitting china, the sound resonating, bouncing off the glass chandelier that hangs above the mahogany dining table.

" _Katherine._ " Her mother, swathed in purple velvet at the bottom of the table, admonishes, pressing her lips together into a thin line. Katherine ignores her.

"The notion of my stepping out with a gentleman is ridiculous, simply because he previously refused to support your attempt to starve hundreds of young boys?"

"The notion that you believe that street rat to be a gentleman is ridiculous to me."

"Excuse me." No one mistakes her statement for a request.

She stands, crumpling the thick linen napkin and throwing it down on the upholstered dining room chair. Unfolding itself, the white fabric begins to slither off onto the floor, but Katherine is already halfway out the room.

"Katherine, sit down." Pulizter shouts, jumping to his feet and slamming his fists on the table. Porridge slops over the side of Edith's bowl. A maid hurries over to wipe up the mess. Katherine does not turn around. "Katherine!"

Sod expectations. Sod Sunday lunch. She's going to see Jack.

…

He's waiting around the corner where they always meet, one hand thrust deep into the pocket of his slacks, endlessly churning the carefully counted coins nestled there through his fingers, the other hand tugging at the soft peak of his cap, fingers half-tangled in the dark curls that spill over his forehead. And then there she is, barrelling around the corner without her coat or hat, face a picture of righteous anger, some avenging angel in petticoats and heels who attacks him before he can even get his bearings.

Katherine yanks his head down, hand on the back of his neck, and presses his lips to hers with a ferocity which neither one of them had before quite known that she possessed. Jack stumbles backwards, one arm wrapped around her waist, until his back meets the rough brick of the wall behind him. He lets out a soft grunt into her mouth as the brick catches at the material of his jacket, scraping his skin through the fabric. Finally, finally, she breaks away, eyes wide.

"The hell was that for?" He gasps, voice hoarse and an octave lower than usual. Katherine drops her gaze, heat rising in her cheeks, suddenly very aware of the fact that, whilst nobody was around, they are still in a hugely public setting.

"I missed you." She shrugs, looking down. Jack stares at her, dumbfounded, then chuckles and throws an arm around her shoulders, pressing a kiss to her forehead and directing their steps away from the Pulitzer mansion.

"You's gonna be the death o' me, one o' these days." He mumbles, turning his head so that her soft curls brush against his face.

She can't be seen in polite company, not without her hat, so they take the long way round through the maze of back streets lined with filthy discarded blankets and puddles of unidentified liquid pooling between the cobblestones. Jack knows them like the back of his hand. Katherine just tries to stop her shoes from getting too dirty.

Eventually they reach the alley behind Medda's theatre and Jack produces a key from his waistcoat pocket that he slips into the lock of the stage door. It's a Sunday afternoon. Nobody will be there. They're young and in love and they have a whole theatre all to themselves. If Cornelia knew about this, Katherine knows, there would be a scandal before the day was out. It's her father's worst nightmare. It's _brilliant_.

Jack leads her up and into a private box, the same private box, she notes, that they met in – well, were formally introduced. She doesn't count his initial encounter on the street as properly meeting him. All either of them had seen, then, was a pretty face. The box is tired, the red velvet that covers the loveseat worn thin and threadbare in places and the paintwork grubby and cracked. It's not the kind of theatre her father would take her to, that's for sure.

"Do you wish I could takes you places like this for real?" Jack asks, pulling her down beside him on the loveseat. It's comfortable between them now, though his casual physical affection had shocked her at first. She nuzzles into his side and closes her eyes as he leans his head back, fingers carding through her hair.

"Hm?" He can feel the vibration of her throat against his chest.

"To the theatre. To plays an', an'… give you the life you's got now. I ain't got much, Katherine." His voice is both quiet and unbearably loud in the silence of the darkened theatre.

"I don't want the life I have now." Katherine spits, sitting up and taking hold of his face, turning him towards her. His eyes shine in the half-light. "I don't want stupid tea parties and embroidery circles and my father controlling my every move! I want to have a tiny apartment and tap away on a broken typewriter and-" She stops abruptly, turning away from him.

"And?" Jack asks, gently taking her chin between his thumb and forefinger and turning her back to him. He's trembling.

"You. I want you." She states, meeting his eyes, then holds up a hand. "I don't care what you have or haven't got, Jack Kelly. You work hard. You love me. That's all I need."

He leans in and kisses her, catching her waist and pulling her down on top of him, her body pressing against him. She squeaks and Jack laughs into her mouth, low and warm and rumbling. They do this for a while, Katherine pinning him to the loveseat and taking control. It's a relief, somehow, to let someone else be in charge for once. Finally, though, when she's breathless and laying her head on his chest, he broaches the topic that he knows is the cause of the tension in all of her muscles.

"What argument with your father brought this on, then, huh?" Jack asks. His calloused fingers rub slow circles across her back, working the knots out with careful, practiced fingers.

"He's invited – oh, right there - the Brooks over for dinner." Katherine sighs, rolling her shoulders and arching into him, all lithe and catlike.

"How terrible." Jack deadpans.

"Terrible for you," Katherine grins, elbowing him, "he's trying to set me up with their son, Arthur."

"Should I's be worried?" His tone is teasing, but she sees the way he sets his jaw and the way the veins in his forearms bulge as he clenches his fists quickly. She slips her soothing hand under his body, running it across the muscular expanse of his back, able to feel the ridges of his many scars through the thin cotton of his shirt.

"No. I want you, remember?" She says, quiet and fierce, nosing at his neck.

"Hm. Could you jus' refresh my memory?" He asks, all low and smug, turning his head to catch her mouth.

Their kisses are long and languid and comfortable. Jack groans when she breaks away, flopping backwards with a thump.

"Why don't you come to dinner?" She asks. Jack snorts. "I'm serious!" She bats at his chest.

"You wan' me to have dinner wi' your father. You's losin' your mind, Ace." He chuckles, shaking his head, staring up into the darkness at the elaborately moulded ceiling.

"Why?" Katherine pushes herself up on her elbows, blowing a strand of hair out of her face. "It'll have to happen sometime. Why not now?"

"Your father is after my head." His eyes flick down to her.

"My father is your employer."

"All the more reason not to turn up for dinner and tell 'im his daughter's been sittin' in my lap."

"I thought you were serious about us." Katherine sits up properly, her tone no longer teasing.

"I am! Hell, Ace, 'course I am." Jack follows suit, pulling her in, back, close to him, cradling her in his embrace.

She relaxes a little in his arms, breathing him in, all ink and sweat.

"Part of being serious involves meeting my family, Jack." She mumbles against his shoulder.

"I's already met 'im! An' I don't like 'im."

She doesn't need to see his face to know that he's pouting, a petulant child. She's winning.

"Please, Jack. For me." She plants a kiss at the juncture of his neck and shoulder, feeling him shudder beneath her.

"Fine." He sighs, dropping his head into her shoulder. Katherine resists the urge to punch the air. "But jus' this once-"

She squeals, pulling back and planting a firm kiss on his lips.

"My father's face will be a picture!"

 _So will be everybody else's when they see me_ , Jack thinks.

They lay there a long time, almost long enough for Jack to untangle the knot of worry forming in his stomach. She lies beside him, letting him stroke her hair and kiss her and tell her in hushed tones all the things that he'd be too afraid to tell her in daylight. But here, in the darkness of the theatre, it's alright somehow, not quite real. The things said in empty theatres are nothing more than rejected scripts. So he tells her about the Refuge and cries a little when he's certain she can't see. He tells her the story of each and every scar on his back. He tells her how tired he is, how he's always working and how he can't eat without feeling guilty and how worried he is about his band of boys. And she tells him things, too. How she doesn't fit in. How her family hates her. How much editorial pushback she's getting at work.

Before either of them are quite aware of it, it's almost five in the afternoon and Katherine slips off to the ladies' to rearrange her hair and makeup into something that almost resembles respectability before they step back out into the real world.

Despite autumn being well and truly here, the dark nights creeping in through the New York streets, it's still aggressively bright when they step outside, blinking and shielding their eyes from the harsh, garish sunlight. Katherine asks him about Romeo and Juliet as they walk back and Jack feels the knot of worry begin to form in his stomach once again. He lies through his teeth that he's enjoying it, but hasn't quite finished it yet. He's maybe understood twenty words of the whole thing. _Oh well,_ Jack thinks, as she pulls him in for one last sweet kiss, all apple juice and flowers, _that can be tomorrow's problem._


	6. Chapter 6

"All the captions are excellent, Jack. As are the illustrations." Davey slides the sheets of paper back across the kitchen table to Jack.

"Hey, thanks Davey. I really 'preciate you checkin' 'em over for me."

It's become comfortable, this little routine, that, rain or shine, Jack turns up at the Jacobs' home every afternoon for Davey to check the spelling of his captions before he drops them off at The World. Jack knows that it's a pain for Davey and that he ought to ask Katherine, but he can stand looking stupid in front of Davey – lord knows he's done it enough – in a way that he can't in front of Katherine. And Davey is just so damn nice about it, saying that it's no trouble and inviting him to stay for dinner. He never does. Jack is just fine with his boys, and now, he supposes, Katherine. He wouldn't know how to behave around a kitchen table with folks, folks acting like they're his folks as well as Davey's and Les'. Because they would, he knows, because Mayer and Esther are quite possibly two of the nicest people he's ever met and Esther is constantly looking at him with these big wide eyes that tell him that given half a chance she'd have him tucked up in bed with homemade soup and read him a bedtime story.

Jack just sort of sits there, then, fiddling with his cap and looking everywhere except at Davey. He examines the Jacobs' small home, the wooden table stained with years of family life, the two china plates which are the only elements of Esther and Mayer's wedding china that haven't gone to the pawnbrokers, the laundry hanging above the range.

"Is there something else you wanted to talk about?" Davey ventures.

"So, don't go tellin' the whole world 'bout this, alright?" Jack sighs, earning a nod from the other boy. "Katherine's lent me this book and I ain't managin' to make head nor tail of it. I's was wonderin', seein' as you's so smart an' all-"

"Hand it over." Davey smiles. Jack produces the leather bound edition from his newsie sack and Davey let out a low whistle. "This certainly wasn't cheap to get." Jack raises an eyebrow and Davey elaborates. "This has been printed and then rebound so that all the books on the shelf will look the same, all neat together. It'll have cost a pretty penny and then some."

"Yeah, well, I's more interested in what's inside it." Jack tries to brush off the comment, but he can't help feeling even more inadequate.

"It's Shakespeare, no wonder you're struggling." Davey says, flipping the book open as Esther bustles in behind him, lifting the lid of a pot on the range and releasing a gorgeous aroma into the room.

"Hey!" Jack cries, the words smarting. "I ain't stupid jus' 'cause I ain't been to fancy schools like you."

"I never said you were. Half the people in my class at school couldn't understand it."

"Oh." Jack drops his indignance, then his head onto his arms. "How the hell am I ever gonna get it then?" He mumbles out.

"Here, you read out the bits you're struggling with and I'll help you work it out. We can do a bit each night and then we'll be done in no time."

"Okay." Jack takes the book back and flips to a page he's dog eared. Suddenly self-conscious, he smooths out the crease he had made in the corner, wondering whether Katherine would notice. How had he already managed to screw up something so expensive and beautiful? _Hell,_ he thinks, _it's not like I haven't done that before. It's not like I'm not doing that to Katherine._ "Here, see: If I pro- If I profa – what the hell does that say?" He shoves it back across to Davey.

"Profane. You know, like profanity? Like cursing and stuff. It means to sorta disrespect something, or dirty it up."

"Mm. If I pro- profane with my un – worth – iest… unworthiest! Hand. This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this: My lips, two blushin' pilgrims, ready stand, to smooth that rough touch wi' a tender kiss-" Jack lowers the book, "you sure they didn't print these words out of order?"

"No, Jack," Davey chuckles, "it's just poetic license."

"You need a license to be a poet? Who the hell thought it was a good idea to give this guy one?"

"No, it- never mind. Do you at least understand what it says now?"

"Uh, sorta," Jack rubs the back of his neck nervously, "he thinks he's gonna get her hand dirty if he touches it, and so he reckons he'll kiss it betta'?"

"Sorta, yeah." Davey nods. "And he's comparing her to a shrine, so he's kind of idolizing her, see?"

"Idolizing?" Jack raises his eyebrows. He can hardly think with the smell of Esther's stew all around him, making his stomach cramp like someone's squeezing it, never mind understand Davey's big words.

"Like, revering her." Davey tries, only to be met with a dark look. "He's saying she's a goddess, Jack."

"Why didn't you jus' say that? Or betta' yet, why didn't he?" He grouches, returning to the book. "Look, an' this bit too, huh: Romeo, Romeo, where- where- wherefore art thou, Romeo? Why's she askin' where he is? It's the middle o' the night, he oughta be home, in bed."

"Wherefore doesn't mean where, it means why. She's asking why he is Romeo."

"Well it's 'cos his parents called 'im that, ain't it? This Juliet really ain't the brightest, is she?"

"No, she-" Davey closes his eyes and lets out a long-suffering sigh, "I think we're done for tonight, just… bring it back tomorrow and we'll do some more, yeah?"

"Sure," Jack tucks the book away once more, "hey, Davey?"

"Yeah?" He mumbles back, already engrossed, once again, in the geometry textbook he'd been studying before Jack arrived.

"Thanks for your help."

"Anytime, Jack." At this, Jack nods and gets up to leave. "Hey," Davey looks up from his book, "you want to stay for dinner?"

"Uh," he casts a longing look over at the pot on the range, then looks up at the clock – 5.30pm, damn, "I's gotta these drawin's over to The World before six. I's wouldn't wanta be interruptin' anyhow. Thanks though."

"We don't eat until seven." Davey states. "Go drop off your illustrations and then come back. You aren't interrupting anything and Mother likes having you – every time you wander off she moans about you not eating right." Jack freezes, torn between the guilt of eating their hard-earned food and his desperate desire to slot into Davey's family life.

"Jack!" At the sight of him, Les springs from the doorway he had just entered through and throws himself at the older boy.

"Hey kid!" Jack laughs, catching him with ease and swinging him up and onto his shoulder so the boy could almost reach the ceiling. "How'd you do sellin' them papes today, eh?"

"I sold seventy-four, only had to take one back!"

"Well ain't you quite the little newsie! You'll be overtakin' me soon."

"Hey, Les," a slow grin spreads over David's face, "Jack says he's going to join us for dinner after he's dropped off his illustrations at The World."

"Well-" Jack stumbles over his words as he bends to let Les slide down off his shoulder.

"Really? Can I come with you? I really want to see inside where they make the papes! Please, Jack, please!" Jack looks over at Davey, who raises his eyebrows oh-so-innocently. Like butter wouldn't bloody melt.

"Sure, kid," Jack sighs, "you can come. I's gon' be as quick as I can, but starts without me if I's holdin' you up."

"We can wait." Davey grins.

So they walk the streets of New York, these two newsies, as the flood of tired office workers heading on home turns into a steady drip of people filtering off onto various side streets. The August sunlight turns the fancy white stone buildings orange and casts their shadows long. Les bounces alongside Jack, telling him about all the things he's been learning after he's come home from selling papes and how good he's getting at reading. Jack makes appreciative noises, which is more than enough for the talkative Les, but he can't help wondering whether this ten-year-old might not be a better student of Shakespeare than he is at almost nineteen.

When they turn onto Park Row, Jack points it out.

"See that skyscraper, there, kid?" Les nods emphatically. "That's where we's goin'."

"You work there?"

"Sure do."

"But it's huge!" Les sets off at a run for the building.

It's pretty hard to miss, rising stories and stories above all the other buildings around it, stretching up to the sky like a modern-day tower of Babel, until it forms a great dome. Painted in the palette of the afternoon sunlight, Jack can almost see himself through Les' eyes, see himself as someone important, someone who deserves to work in a place like this. But the skyscraper has a long shadow today, stretching out over the city, reaching into the tired alleys and onto the park benches where the street rats sleep. And deep down, Jack knows that that's where he belongs, not inside the opulence of the offices of The New York World.

As they walk in, Jack takes hold of Les' hand, incredibly conscious of his scuffed boots on the polished marble floor of the entrance hall. Les is very quiet all of a sudden, and he's grateful for it. They are already getting stared at, these two dirt-streaked boys in ratty old clothes, surrounded by men in tailored three-piece suits with carefully trimmed moustaches. On the third floor, Jack heads in through an arched doorway, shoving it open with his shoulder, never relinquishing his tight grip on Les' hand. The room is lined with paper strewn desks, musky with the smell of ink and graphite, and it's almost empty. They traverse the length of it until they finally reach a large mahogany desk with a plaque on the front that says 'Head Illustrator'.

Jack lets go of Les just long enough to exchange his drawings for an envelope and list, courtesy of the Head Illustrator, a rotund man who has a nervous tic of checking his gold pocket watch at regular intervals. Then they're out of there.

"What d'you think, then, Les?" Jack asks, finally letting go of the boy. Les thinks for a long moment, lifting his face up to the sky and stretching out his cramping fingers.

"I think it's an awful lot warmer than the lodgehouse, considering that nobody stays there overnight."

"Yeah, kid, yeah, it is." Jack sighs, ducking his head and rubbing at the back of his neck.

Les looks up at him, or rather, through him, like he can see every thought running through Jack's head. The young boy's response is unambiguously Les-like, spinning around to walk backwards, facing Jack, and starting to chatter on about his latest pre-pubescent conquests (a.k.a. all of the little girls from his street that he's managed to persuade to go on a date with him). Jack nods seriously and chuckles softly in all the right places, so Les keeps going, willing the older boy to take his guilty eyes from the pavement. That is, until he goes sprawling backwards and Jack has to leap forward and catch him.

"The fuck you think you're doin'?"

Jack's eyes flick up to see Oscar Delancey looming over them, and yanks the younger boy to his feet rather more harshly than intended judging by Les' wince.

"You shoulda watched where you's goin'!" Les snaps, rubbing his shoulder.

"You little-" Oscar lunges for Les, but Jack's hand on the man's chest stops him in his tracks.

At least, for a moment. Then his right hand comes round and connects with the side of Jack's head, knuckles crunching against the line of Jack's cheekbone, ring slicing into the side of his eyelid and Jack goes sprawling. But he's barely touched the pavement, hands out to catch himself, when he hears a sickening sort of crack and he's on his feet again, dazed but looking for Les, eyes searching for him through a bloodied haze.

The crack, thank god, doesn't seem to have come from Les. The boy is dancing around Delancey in an almost comical boxing stance, ducking and weaving in the way Jack taught him after he'd had to shove him in a barrel during the strike. _It must be nice to grow up in a home where boxing wasn't a skill you learned the hard way,_ Jack had thought.

Jack's on his feet again, wrapping one arm around Oscar's neck and pulling him to the ground, pushing the man's face into the pavement until he sees blood start to trickle across the slab.

"You knows," Jack says standing up and aiming a wobbly kick at Delancey's stomach, the older man squirming in pain, "when people says 'pick on someone your own size', they's meanin' height, Oscar, not the size o' what's in your pants."

With that, the life seems to drain out of Jack and he slings an arm around Les to steer him away. The younger boy is having absolutely none of it. He ducks under Jack's arm, no difficult task now that the adrenaline of the fight is giving way to pain, and fits the toe of his boot between two of Oscar's ribs, before running back up to Jack.

"Hey, Jack, how bad did he getcha?" Les peers up at him.

"I'm fine, Les, let's just get you home, eh?"

…

By the time they've reached the Jacobs' home, Les knows that Jack is lying. A large purple bruise is blooming over his left cheek, reaching its tendrils up to his eye socket. Blood from a gash where his eye socket meets his cheekbone has dripped down onto his collar. Les thinks that if he connected the spots then they might play like his new piano piece. Pain, in G minor.

Esther Jacobs takes one look at the infamous Jack Kelly and pushes him down into one of the wooden kitchen chairs, sweeping away the carefully laid plates and cutlery and fetching water and a cloth. Jack's protests that he's not up to staying for dinner fall on deaf ears, Esther having absolutely none of it, shushing him as if he were just a child. As if he were her child. A child with a mother. Tears form at the corners of his eyes, but that's okay, because she's pouring rubbing alcohol on the gash below his eye now and that kind of sting would make anybody well up. It's okay.

Davey stares open-mouthed. Jack supposes that it's only natural that Davey would realise that he, Jack Kelly, was nothing but trouble sooner or later, but he vaguely hopes, despite his earlier protests, that Davey will let him stay for dinner before he tells him to never come near Les again. Esther's stew smells delicious. It's only when Davey hugs him, a crushing hug, but quick, almost embarrassed, that makes his right arm sting peculiarly, and whispers a brusque thanks in his ear for looking out for Les that Jack realises that Davey's stare wasn't one of anger. It has been a long time since anybody stared at Jack without anger. Unless it was Katherine, of course, though half the time he can't tell half of what she's thinking.

Esther notices Jack's wince and doesn't let it go. She snatches up his arm even though he insists that he's fine, honest, Mrs. Jacobs, and presses at his wrist in a way that makes him cry out in pain. It turns out that that crack he'd heard earlier? Yeah, that was his wrist snapping. Sarah emerges at the very second of this announcement from the living room and wraps his wrist in bandages to keep it in place. Jack's surprised she can even tie it off when she's sacrificing so much of her sight to fluttering his eyelashes at him, but it's no real concern. He'd have been pleased at the effect he was having on her a few months ago. Now he just thinks that Katherine's eyelashes are nicer.

Esther worries her bottom lip between her teeth and rambles on about a doctor. That's when Jack puts his foot down.

"Mrs. Jacobs, I really 'preciate this, I do, but I don't need no doctor. I's had much worse an' it'll be fine now it's wrapped. I's broken bones before an' it ain't done me no harm."

He tries to give her a reassuring smile, but the action tugs at the corner of the cut on his face. The smile doesn't last long. Esther and Mayer – Jack wonders distantly whether he's in shock because he doesn't remember Mayer appearing behind his wife – look supremely unconvinced, but let it slide. They don't let him slip out though. Esther tucks his chair round and under the table before he has a chance to protest, then immediately dollops an enormous helping of stew on his plate.

Jack shovels it into his mouth one-handed, making sure that his mouth is always full so they don't call on him to answer any of the questions Mayer directs at his sons. He asks them about things like algebra and Torah scholarship and some bloke called Marlowe. Jack wouldn't even know where to start. He finishes his plate, wiping up the last of the gravy with a thick piece of strange flat bread. There's another piece on the serving plate in the centre of the table. Mayer sees the way he's eyeing it and casually, as if it is the most commonplace thing in the world, puts it on Jack's plate. It hurts to chew, but hell if it isn't worth it.


	7. Chapter 7

Jack doesn't know what his mother looked like. He imagines that she looked something like Esther Jacobs, with curly hair and soft brown eyes and laughter lines around her eyes. He imagines that her hands would have been red from laundry, like Esther's, but they'd still be softer than his. He imagines that the feeling he gets when Esther pats him gently on the shoulder, a tingling, buzzing sensation that itches under his skin and makes him want to let himself be looked after, would be the same feeling as when his mother touched him.

His old man hadn't ever touched him, not if he could help it. It was like he thought Jack was still covered with his mother's blood. Sure, he'd bathed him until he was old enough to do it himself, scrubbed him raw, in fact, but that was about the extent of it. Jack remembers the way his father recoiled from his touch, the revulsion on his features when Jack had stretched out his arms. Jack is still amazed every time Katherine doesn't pull away from him.

It's fine, though, because Jack doesn't need to be touched. It's fine, he assures himself, that the Jacobs won't want to have him over again. It's fine that Katherine will ditch him for Arthur Brooks once she sees the bruise blooming across his face and realises that he'll never fit in at her high society dinners. It's fine. Jack is fine. He has an apartment. He has Crutchie's playful punches for human contact. Besides, it's not like touch ever did him much good anyway. Whenever his father had touched him, it had stung, and not in the vaguely pleasant, under-the-skin kind of way that Esther had managed. No, this sting was fiery.

Esther's pat on the shoulder is an appeal for him to stay. Davey offers up his bed at his mother's request without a second thought, confusingly blasé about being kicked out of his room. Jack doesn't understand why Davey isn't fighting harder for his bed. Once people realise you don't need something, why would they ever give it back to you? Well, Jack won't be the reason Davey doesn't get to sleep in his fancy bed.

He rolls his shoulder out of Esther's grip and assures the Jacobs, a crowd of worried faces clamouring around him at the door – a crowd of blurry faces, god, Delancey had got him good – that he's fine, he just needs to sleep it off.

Jack does make it back to the lodgehouse, which he counts as a roaring success considering that his head span enough on his way that he fell over twice. A couple who look like the kind of people that Katherine would have dinner with were strolling along the pavement, long wool coats wrapped tightly around themselves, and looked down their noses at him. It takes Jack a few moments to realise that they think he's drunk. The second time he falls he falls onto his broken wrist. He doesn't scream, just grits his teeth and bears through the pain, telling himself that it's just like stubbing his toe, it'll pass. The pain doesn't pass, but it ebbs a bit, enough for him to pick himself back up and time his footsteps to the steady throbbing of his wrist.

He thanks five different deities that he doesn't believe in when he figures that all the boys are asleep when he gets back. As he sneaks through and climbs the fire escape, Jack wonders whether that's actually something to be grateful for, that nobody was waiting up for him.

There are tears on his cheeks. He doesn't know which pain is causing them.

…

He takes the next day off selling papers. He manages, even though his arm hurts like a bitch and his face feels like it's been attacked by bees. He stays up on the roof, sketching with his good hand, and it must be well after lunchtime when he hears footsteps on the fire escape. Laying aside his work, he looks over.

"Jack – oh my lord." Katherine peeks her head over the edge of the roof only to stop dead in her tracks. "What happened to you?"

"You should see the other guy." He deadpans, shooting her a lopsided grin that makes the bruise on his face burn.

Katherine scrambles over the edge of the building. She's holding a large parcel wrapped in brown paper. Jack eyes it suspiciously but she just sets it down and hurries over. He's about to tell her off, as much as anybody can tell off this whirlwind reporter, because of course she'd taken it upon herself to buy him the first birthday present he's ever received. Her thumb skims across his cheekbone feather-light, inspecting him. It hurts, but he doesn't let himself wince, instead closes his eyes and brings his hand up on top of hers, keeping her palm pressed against his face. It's better than an ice pack. She's warm and soft and real and he can't quite believe his luck.

"Jack, what happened?" Her voice is softer now. She doesn't take her hand away.

"Oscar Delancey." He shrugs.

"Jack-" The hand drops. Damn.

"I didn't mean to, alright?" Jack sighs, not daring to open his eyes. "He was gonna hurt Les. 'Kay?"

He hears her sigh in response, but knows that he's won this round. When he opens his eyes, she's holding out a parcel to him.

"I've got something for you."

"What is it?"

"Open it and see."

He eyes her suspiciously, but dutifully takes the parcel and slides off the twine wrapped around it. Inside is a soft charcoal material that unfolds as he removes it from the packaging. It's a fucking suit. It's fucking new. Jack has never touched anything like it before in his life. It's an everyday suit, sure. It's nothing fancy, simple, three pieces. Undecorated. But it's new and it's his.

"Ace-"

"I got you this, too." She interrupts him, thrusting a small card at him. Jack squints at it. "It's a different one – a dinner suit – but it's only rented. I was going to buy you one, but then I realised you'd not have much chance to wear it, so I thought I'd get you an everyday one and then just rent a dinner suit for you for tomorrow night. I didn't want you to feel like you didn't fit in, you know, when you come over." She's immensely focused on the laces of his boots and there's a flush rising in her cheeks despite the frigid wind which is blowing across the rooftop. "I know you don't like me spending money on you, but I really just wanted you to have something nice and-"

He shuts her up with a kiss, cradling her face in his hands. It's quick, as much as he doesn't want it to be, because his face hurts.

"Thanks, Ace." He says pulling away. His voice is low and gravelly and it makes Katherine a little weak at the knees.

Jack doesn't quite know how to react, but he does know that he doesn't want her to think that he doesn't like it. So he pushes down the sick feeling in his stomach which is telling him that he should be the one buying her expensive gifts, not the other way around, and thanks her because he knows that if he doesn't he'll try and give it back. It crosses his mind to sell it – surely even opened it'd fetch enough to feed all thirty boys for almost a month if he's careful – but he shakes the thought away. He couldn't do that to her. At least, that's what he'll tell himself so he feels less selfish.

"You're not angry with me for spending money on you?" She asks, smoothing down his shirt collar with gentle fingers and not quite meeting his eyes.

"I'm sad I's can't do the same for you, but I ain't angry." Jack mumbles, half embarrassed, half coaxing, nosing at her jaw.

"I'm glad that you can't." Her hands tighten in the fabric of his shirt. "I'm fed up of people thinking that they can buy my affection with expensive gifts. Well, I want you Jack Kelly. No matter what you have or haven't got."

"Hell, Ace, what'd I do to deserve you?" He asks, dropping his tired head onto her shoulder.

"Something awful, I'd imagine." Jack can hear her grin.

He pulls back, chuckling, then reaches into his pocket.

"I do have somethin' for you, though."

"Jack, it's your birthday." Katherine admonishes, falling back into a slightly more upright kneeling position beside him, but he can tell she's excited by the smile that tugs at the corner of her lips.

"It's more o' a present for me, really." He pulls a key out of his pocket and presses it into her palm, taking a deep breath. "I's got an apartment. I moves in in a couple o' days. Now, this ain't cos I's expectin' anythin'; I ain't tryna push you to do nothin' you don't wanna do. I jus' want you to know that you's got somewhere to come to if ever you gets to worn out wi' that old man o' yours."

Katherine takes the key from his palm, dirty bronze between delicate fingers with manicured nails. Jack is suddenly immensely interested in the half tied laces of his boots and rubs his good hand up and down the back of his neck, feeling the short stubbly hairs there and wondering whether he ought to ask Crutchie to tidy up his hair before he goes to meet Kath's parents.

Then those fingers have taken his chin and he's looking at her.

"You impossible boy." She laughs softly, shaking her curly head, and leans in to kiss him.

…

When Jack turns up at Medda's theatre the next afternoon as the sun is beginning to dip below the brick chimneys of the New York skyline, it takes her a good five minutes to coax an answer out of him. She looks him up and down, taking in the bruises and the bandaged wrist and the large suit cover he has slung over one arm as he shuffles his feet and mumbles and rubs at the back of his neck.

"You want a favour from me? The famous Jack Kelly wants a favour from little ol' Miss Medda?" She folds her arms and leans back, raising one perfectly groomed eyebrow.

"I ain't famous, Miss Medda." Jack shrugs uncomfortably.

"Well, spit it out then, baby. I ain't got all day."

"I's meetin' Kath's family. Tonight. An' I was hopin' you would help me look the part." She almost falls over. Well, that was certainly unexpected.

"And in there?" She gestures at the suit cover Jack has folded over his arm.

"My dinner suit." Miss Medda whistles low.

"Well, baby, ain't you goin' up in the world?"

"Medda-"

"O' course I'll help you, Jack, anythin' for my star set designer. C'mon, let's get you set up." She puts one arm around his shoulders, noting the way that his shoulder blades dig into the soft flesh of her arm. She makes a mental note to make sure she gives him more sandwiches the next time he's here. And to watch him eat them.

His hair is their first battle. Medda plonks him down on a stool in the girls' dressing room though, much to Jack's relief, she doesn't bother to turn on the lightbulbs surrounding the mirror. He already feels like a prize idiot; he doesn't need any more help. His dark curls are so unruly that two of the teeth in Medda's comb break off and hide themselves in the matted mess usually hidden by his newsboy cap. They both swear at that.

"Lord, boy, don't cha' ever run a comb through this hair o' yours?" She grumbles, plucking the broken teeth out and turning around to pick up a sturdy wooden brush instead.

"I ain't got a comb," Jack growls, grunting as she yanks the brush through his hair, "you think I's got the extra dough to be throwin' around on garbage like that? My fingers do jus' fine."

"Clearly not." Medda grumbles.

When she finally finishes getting the knots out of his hair (or, Jack thinks, ripping them out), she then takes up a pair of scissors and snips away until there's a dusting of dark hairs all across his shoulders. It's itchy and uncomfortable, but Jack does his best not to squirm, reminding himself that it's not as bad as the time that bedbugs decided to make their home in his straw mattress at the Refuge and he would wake up every morning with more fiery bites spread across his back and stomach. And then she gets out the razor.

"Whoa!" Jack jerks away as she flips the sharp blade out of its cover, almost knocking the stool over as he jumps off it. "Whaddaya doin'? I's already shaved." He runs his hand over his smooth jaw as if to prove it.

"Yeah, but you got quite the jungle goin' on on the back o' your neck. Sit back down, ya big lump." Medda rolls her eyes, pointing at the stool with the razor, no nonsense.

Jack sits back down slowly and squeezes his eyes shut. The cold metal barely touches the back of his neck before he lurches forward against the sideboard that runs under the row of mirrors, spinning around as he does so. His eyes are wild, the razor on the floor where he knocked it from Medda's hand. Slowly his hand comes up to the back of his neck where warm blood is trickling down and staining his shirt collar.

"Jack, honey." His eyes flick to Medda, her voice soft and low, her hands outstretched. "You're safe." He holds her gaze, just for a moment, then the tension drains from his shoulders.

"Sorry, Miss Medda – ma'am. I's – I didn' mean to – I –" He's mumbling, pleading, eyes flicking toward the door, heart pounding -

"Oh, baby." She shakes her head at him. Jack can't deal with the pity in her eyes. "C'mere."

Slowly, warily, he walks into her arms, dropping his head onto her shoulder despite her being almost a foot shorter than him. Her hands, firm and gentle, rub up and down his back. He curses himself for going soft. If the boys could see him now, they'd never let him hear the end of it.

"Sorry, Miss Medda." He mumbles, the words muffled against her shoulder.

"You ain't got nothin' to be sorry for, baby. Now, how we goin' to get you cleaned up, hey?" Jack steps back and lets her look him over.

"I'll be fine if you wanna carry on." Jack says quietly. "I won't jump no more."

"You sure, honey?"

Jack nods. She feels him flinch a couple of times as she cleans up the back of his neck, cleaning away loose strands of hair and then mopping up his blood with a damp cloth, but he stays put.

Her fingers, rough from years of hard work, brush occasionally across his skin and Jack drinks it up, the fact that she's touching him and not recoiling in revulsion, even if the brushes are accidental. It's even nicer when she takes his face between her hands and gently pats a thin layer of powder over his eye. It doesn't get rid of the bruise – she's not a magician, as she none too gently reminds him – but it certainly makes it less obvious.

Jack tries to convince himself that if he keeps his eyes lowered politely throughout the dinner then he might get away without people noticing. _Who is he kidding?_ He blinks at himself in the mirror, hardly recognising the man who blinks back. He might scrub up nicely, but underneath are all those same layers of dirt – the kind that comes from living on the streets, the kind that doesn't wash off. They'll see right through him.

He pulls on the starched, uncomfortable dinner suit and realises that he looks like a mildly confused penguin before he's even got the jacket on. _You're doing this for Katherine,_ he reminds himself, and bends down to tie his laces. _God knows why,_ the voice in his head continues, _when she's definitely going to quit on you after tonight,_ but he pushes the voice away and steps out of the dressing room.

"Well?" Jack asks, lifting his arms out on either side to show of the suit and immediately regretting it the fabric bunches up around his shoulders. Katherine had done pretty well with the sizing, he has to admit, but she hadn't quite taken into account the breadth of his shoulders. Medda's eyes widen.

"You won't be showin' her up, that's for sure." Jack shrugs a little at that, inadvertently rucking up the suit jacket even more.

"My looks was hardly gonna be what I was worried 'bout." He's aiming for cocky, but falls short with a half-hearted grin.

Medda stands up from her seat on the chaise longue and walks over to smooth down the wrinkles in the suit and fiddle with his tie.

"You gon' be just swell, baby."

"You don' think they're gon' think I's an idiot?"

"Nah, honey, you's gon' blow them away. Besides, who cares what they think? Katherine loves you."

"She might not if I screw this up."

"Like hell she will." Medda gently bats at the side of his head. "She hardly gon' be able to think straight when you scrub up like this."

"I ain't jus' a pretty face, ya know." Jack grins. She smiles back, shaking her head.

"Now get outta here. You don' want to be late."

Jack straightens himself up and heads for the door, tugging at his shirt cuffs, then turns around.

"Hey, Miss Medda?" The woman, watching him leave and feeling almost absurdly fond, raises one critical brow. Jack smiles, a quick tug at the corners of his mouth. "Thanks."


	8. Chapter 8

For some reason, Jack is expecting Katherine to open the door when he arrives. So, he isn't expecting it when an elderly man in a neatly pressed suit opens the imposing front door of the Pulizter house – strike that, mansion – and looks down a long hooked nose to where Jack is stood at the bottom of the steps. Jack snatches his newsboy cap off his head with nervous fingers and introduces himself.

"Jack Kelly, pleased to meet'cha." He attempts his usual rakish grin, stretching out a still slightly grubby hand to the man.

The butler looks down at Jack's hand, then back up at his face, scanning the poorly concealed bruises with contempt. His hands remained folded behind his back as Jack visibly withers under his gaze.

"The tradesman's entrance is to the rear of the building, sir." The butler tells him in a precise, clipped tone.

"Oh, no, I's here for the dinner? Katherine invited me." Jack attempts another smile.

"Miss Pulitzer?" The only indication of surprise is the way his eyebrows heighten just a fraction.

"That's her!"

"Please wait here, sir." The butler turns smartly on his heel and disappears back inside the house, closing the door behind him.

Jack stares, a little perplexed, at the large door in front of him. He tugs at the starched collar of the dinner suit, hoping the cool autumn air will dry a little of the nervous sweat that is gathering between his skin and then fabric. He's not stupid, he can see the disdain in the man's eyes. It doesn't matter what costume he puts on, he knows he'll never be able to fool these people into thinking he's one of them. There are some stains you can't scrub away. Poverty is one of them. Being a street rat is another.

It takes a good two minutes of him scuffing his new, fancy shoes on the path leading up to the door before it opens again. The butler is there, once again disapproving, but he holds the door silently and stares straight ahead as Katherine rushes past him. She's gorgeous, as ever, but Jack can't help but feel nervous seeing her made up, looking less like herself and more like the kind of woman who sneers at him in the street. Her forest green evening gown has more material in its train than makes up his entire wardrobe and he knows with painful clarity that the little pearl studs in her ears likely cost more than he earns in a year. But the smile on her face reassures him, if only a little.

"Hey, Ace." He grins. She grins back, half tripping down the stairs.

"Offer me your arm." She tells him in a low tone. Jack frowns, but a raise of her eyebrows is enough to tell him that now is his time to shut up.

Dutifully, he holds out his arm and she hooks her elbow through it. He quickly cottons on to why she'd requested this – it looks like he's leading, sure, but there's no doubt in his mind that she's the one helping him up the front steps. Jack nods politely to the butler as they pass him, fighting the urge to direct a smug smile his way.

"May I take your jacket, sir?" The butler asks. Jack instantly tenses, unwilling to give away such an expensive item of clothing to a man who so clearly despises him, but an almost imperceptible nod on Katherine's part is enough to convince him. He slips off the jacket with no small amount of reluctance, but hands it over all the same.

The hallway that Katherine leads him down, all chequered marble floor lined with busts of Greek philosophers and exotic houseplants, is one that he's only been in twice before, neither of which were particularly enjoyable memories. Jack hopes against hope that that isn't what Joseph Pulitzer will be thinking about when he walks in.

Katherine steers him toward a rather ornate oak door and lets herself in. Inside is a room bigger than Jack's whole apartment, draped in gold curtains and ostentatious tapestries that look vaguely oriental to his untrained eye. It's beautiful, enough to make him wonder whether he should have been dreaming of somewhere in the far east rather than Santa Fe all his life. _Who are you kidding?_ Jack scolds himself. _You wouldn't fit in in the far east any better than you do here, you idiot._

"Mr. Kelly." Joseph Pulitzer, seated in a large leather armchair drawn up close to the fire on the opposite side of the room, stands, stubbing out his cigar on an ashtray beside him.

"Mr. Pulitzer." Jack plasters on a smile. "Pleasure to see you, sir."

"Likewise, I'm sure." The man remains tight lipped, neglecting to offer a hand.

"Mr. Kelly, may I introduce my mother," Katherine quickly diverts the conversation in an effort to dissipate tension so thick you could cut it with a knife, gesturing toward an older woman reclining imperiously upon a chaise longue beside the window, "and my younger sisters, Edith and Constance." The two girls, far younger than Katherine, rise from where they were playing with their dolls by the hearth and drop into low, neat curtsies.

Jack nods politely at all of them, then, on a whim, shoots a wink at the shy little girl Katherine had introduced as Constance. She isn't quite quick enough to hide the smile that tugs at the corners of her mouth before returning to her game.

"Mr. Kelly, how lovely to meet you," a younger man, perhaps only a year older than Jack himself, with Katherine's curly hair and straight nose, stands from an armchair beside Joseph and strides over with outstretched hand, "my dear sister has told us so much about you. Do have a seat." He gestures toward an empty seat on the two-seater sofa with a curling mahogany back beside his armchair.

Jack thanks the man, who he assumes to be Ralph, Katherine's older brother, and dutifully sits down to take in the group. Katherine, looking mildly disappointed, takes a seat beside her mother, folding her hands demurely in her lap. Jack can feel the eyes of everyone in the room on him, even as the low buzz of conversation returns to the normal volume. Ralph, seated on his left, leans in conspiratorially.

"Absolutely splendid to have you here, old chap." Jack can only nod in response. "Let me introduce you. This man here, this is Mr. Arthur Brooks, son of Mr. and Mrs. Brooks, terribly important folks in the newspaper business you know. And over there is my brother Herbert."

Jack surveys the room carefully, taking in everybody and trying to suppress the instinct developed from years on the streets of noting every possible exit and escape route. Beside him on the sofa, though pressed up against the farthest armrest and staring determinedly ahead, is this Arthur Brooks. So then, this is his competition. The man is young, maybe twenty-four or twenty-five and handsome. Tall, yet not quite so tall as Jack, which he notes with some pride. His straight blond hair is neatly combed and accompanied by a trim, tidily curled moustache bearing no insignificant resemblance to a hairy caterpillar which had made its home on his upper lip. Jack relishes the notion that Brooks, with all his good breeding and inherited fortunes, doesn't have a patch on him looks-wise.

The man's folks are seated on a neighbouring sofa, matching Jack's. The resemblance between them and their son is striking and Jack can't quite work out which one of them Arthur looks more like. He doesn't know whether that makes Arthur excessively feminine, or his mother incredibly mannish. Herbert, despite the dinner suit that suggests a masculinity beyond his years although he must be younger than Crutchie, lurks in the corner of the room staring moodily out of the window on the impeccably trimmed garden with a look of grumpiness only fifteen-year old boys can truly master.

"Mr. Brooks," Jack extends his hand to the man sitting next to him, fighting the urge to see what he'd do if he was to spit in his palm, "how'd you do?"

The man turns as if he's been burned. His eyes flick down to Jack's outstretched hand, then back up to his face. He doesn't offer his own hand.

"Charmed, I'm sure, Mr. Kelly." He allows the silence to hang in the air for a long moment until Jack drops his hand. "Remind me again, darling Katherine may have mentioned it, what is it that you do?"

"I works for old Joe over there," Jack grits his teeth into a pleasant smile, "illustratin' for The World. An' I do some set designin' for a theatre. Yoursel'?"

Before Arthur can respond, his mother jumps into the conversation.

"Oh, how delightful! I do so love the theatre – would you have designed anything I'd have seen? I saw the most delightful production of Romeo and Juliet back in July, the design was just stunning. I must admit I quite fell in love with it!"

"Well, love lies not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes," Jack smiles, the quote coming out of his mouth before he can quite think it through, just trying to avoid mentioning the Bowery. Miss Medda's is the friendliest theatre in every sense of the word and even Jack has enough tact to recognise that the mention of its name wouldn't go down well in polite company.

In his peripheral vision, he sees Pulitzer's jaw drop and then quickly clench back into place as Mrs. Brooks' face breaks into a smile of wonderous excitement.

"You know your Shakespeare! How marvellous! Arthur here won't so much as crack a volume of Shakespeare open." The man beside him frowns, but says nothing. Jack straightens his shoulders a little.

"Well, Katherine's been a good influence on me. She's doin' her best to educate me, though I'm afraid she's fightin' a losin' battle."

"Not at all," Katherine smiles, leaning forward, meeting his eyes for a single conspiratorial moment before looking to Mrs. Brooks, "Jack is an excellent student."

"It was very kind of you to lend out our Shakespeare collection to the less fortunate, Katherine." Joseph Pulitzer cuts in, his tone clipped.

Jack freezes. _Shit._ He's screwed up, he's screwed up real bad, and he knows it. Why the hell is he trying to quote from a book he's essentially stolen from his boss? He presses his lips together and shifts backwards on the sofa, barely able to even feel indignant at his classification as 'less fortunate'. Katherine, for her part, looks about ready to throw a punch, so Jack tries in vain to soothe her with a look. Her eyes, however, are fixed on her father.

"The less fortunate perhaps deserve them more than us," Katherine replies, snappish, unwilling to sit idly by and bear her father's criticism, "as they most likely work harder to achieve the knowledge they have."

Silence hangs heavy in the air. Jack wants to disappear into the floor.

"Shall we move to the dining room?" Mrs. Pulitzer rouses herself, holding out her hand for Katherine to help her up from the couch. "I would imagine dinner will be ready by now."

The party rise and Jack follows, head ducked and fighting the urge to rub at the back of his neck. When he does dare to look up, though, Ralph shoots him a kind smile and, when they enter the dining room, indicates for Jack to sit beside him.

Jack goes to sit down, but stops himself when he realises that everyone else is standing behind their chairs. When Pulitzer finally reaches the head of the table and sits down, followed by the rest of the party, Jack quietly congratulates himself on saving that one.

The dinner itself, he reflects later, could have gone a lot worse. Sure, he was always a mouthful behind everybody else as he carefully gauged which of about a million different forks was the correct one for which dish, but nobody really spoke with him other than the occasional pitying question from Ralph. The women were engaged in chatter about the latest Parisian fashions and the men were talking over the increasing value of shares in different companies. Jack sat quietly and ate his dinner, trying valiantly not scarf it down to sate his growling stomach. He was pretty sure the amount of food on the table would be enough to feed the entire lodgehouse for a month. Katherine kept him going, though, flashing him secretive little smiles across the table whenever he caught her eye. Perhaps, he had thought, it might be worth it just to see those smiles.

It's only after the dinner, when they all retire into yet another sitting room, this one furnished with a grand piano, that things start to go wrong. Whilst Joseph Pulizter has, up until this point, allowed his eyes to simply skim over Jack as he surveyed the table, acting as though his presence was not merely unwelcome, but also unnoticeable, this comes to an abrupt end.

"Well, Mr. Kelly, you've been fighting again, I see. Pray tell, what was it about this time? Did the bakery put up the price of bread?" Jack bristles. What gets to him is how casually Pulitzer says it, puffing it out around his cigar with a small, pressed-together smile. All the eyes in the room are on them.

"Actually, it was your cronies, the Delanceys. S'what happens when you's trying to stop 'em murderin' a ten year old boy for lookin' at 'im the wrong way." He responds, meeting Pulitzer's gaze with daring in his eyes.

The older man frowns and opens his mouth to continue when Ralph claps his hands together and stands up.

"How droll is an evening with no music! Katherine, my dear, you must oblige us, play a little. I'm sure our guests," he shoots Jack a conspiratorial smile, "would be delighted."

"Ralph, I have not played before company in-" Katherine stutters, looking lost.

"No, Katherine, you must." Pulitzer cuts in. "We didn't spend all that money on governesses for nothing now, did we? Mastery of an instrument is a sign of a young lady with breeding. Refinement."

Katherine glares at her father, but stands up and crosses the room to the piano, seating herself before the instrument and delicately shuffling through the leaves of sheet music on the stand. With her lips pursed in concentration, hair swept up, framed by a halo of light from the oil lamp on the wall – Jack's fingers itch to draw her. He wants to freeze her in his mind like this so that he can get her out and look at her whenever he wakes up from a nightmare. He's in a place where he's the most hated boy in New York, but, in that single moment, he's never felt more at home. It makes it all the worse when he realises that it's the last time he'll ever see her like this. The night is dark, and she is beautiful. He loves her, and she is beautiful. This has to end, and she is beautiful.

She starts to play something classical and the Brooks murmur approvingly at her excellent choice. But she stops rather quickly, turning back to them.

"I need someone to turn the music for me," she says, eyebrow arched, "Ja-"

"It would be my pleasure." Arthur Brooks rises from his seat before Katherine has time to even finish Jack's name and walks over to the piano. She looks momentarily incensed, but quickly schools her features back into a reserved countenance, shooting an apologetic look at Jack.

Jack isn't too bothered, if he's being honest, because he knows that he'd just turn it at the wrong time – he can barely read words, never mind music - but he's quite sure that Arthur is standing rather closer to _his_ girl than is absolutely necessary. He looms over her right shoulder, keeping his hand on the page even when he isn't turning it, stooping a little until his head almost rests at the juncture of her neck and shoulder, where the long, smooth line of her figure leads up towards her beautiful face.

Katherine, for her part, is more than sure. She can feel his breath, warm and unpleasant, ghosting across her collarbone. When she fumbles over a particularly difficult part, fighting the urge to mutter one or two of the choicer curse words Race has taught her, Arthur begins to run his finger along the stave, guiding her playing. She has never felt more patronised in her life. She shoots Ralph a glare, furious with him, good intentions be damned, for putting her in this position.

Jack just watches, caught between fury at Arthur and admiration of Katherine, as the remainder of the party murmurs in quiet conversation. Then, he feels a tap on his knee and turns his head. Before him is Constance.

"Is the little boy you helped alright?" She asks, looking up at him with big brown eyes. It takes him a minute to figure out what she's talking about.

"Oh, Les? Yeah, he's fine. He ain't hurt, he jus' needed somebody to stick up for 'im."

"It was nice of you to fight for him." She nods decisively. "Daddy says that he fought for us in the war."

"Does he?" Jack responds, trying to keep the disdain out of his voice as he shifts forward in his seat to better talk to her. "Well, that's what you does for your friends. Friends is worth fightin' for."

"Katherine says that you're her friend." Constance states, like it's the most obvious thing in the world and not at all unusual. Jack finds himself wishing that he hadn't been introduced to her sisters as a mere friend.

"Yeah, I am."

"Do you fight for her?" She asks, tilting her head to the side like a little garden bird.

"Every damn day." Jack chuckles softly, under his breath.

"Pardon?" Constance frowns. Jack remembers himself.

"Yeah, I'd fight for her, if she asked me to." He says, slowly. "But I think your sister is real good at fightin' her own battles, don'tcha think?"

"Yes." Constance nods, considering. "Will you be my friend too?"

"Well, 'course I will." Jack smiles.

Constance nods at that and walks away, leaving Jack a little dumbfounded at the exchange, before returning with a large china doll. The chubby doll has tight blonde ringlets, bright blue eyes, and rosy cheeks. Jack wonders if healthy children are supposed to look as vibrant as this doll, as Constance, so full of life and health and vigour. God knows none of the kids at the lodgehouse have ever looked like that.

"This is Rosie. You can play with her, if you like. Only my friends are allowed play with her."

"Whoa, isn't she gorgeous!" Jack grins, taking the doll and sitting her daintily on the sofa arm between them. "She looks like you, y'know. Are you's sure you ain't her sister, 'stead o' Katherine's?"

"No, silly!" Constance giggles, shaking her head like Jack is the funniest person in the world. "She's a doll. I'm real."

"Oh, so you are." Jack replies, rolling his eyes and smacking his palm against his forehead in mock stupidity. "What games do you an' Rosie play, then?"

"We play tea parties, and hopscotch, and hide and seek." She lists. "What games do you and Katherine play?" Jack almost chokes, trying not to the think about the way that Katherine and he talk and kiss and embrace.

"We's a bit borin', I's afraid," Jack manages, "we jus' talks, mostly."

"That is boring." She wrinkles her nose.

"Why, I knew you were young, Mr. Kelly, but I wasn't quite expecting a child that plays with dolls." Arthur interrupts, smirking, and Jack is hit by the sharp realisation that the music has stopped.

"Mr. Kelly is my friend, that's why he's allowed to touch Rosie." Constance immediately whirls around to face the man, staring up at him.

"You're quite the ladies' man, aren't you Mr. Kelly?" Mrs. Brooks laughs, half indulgent.

"If they're from the circles which Mr. Kelly moves in, I would imagine that to call them ladies would be rather an overstatement." Jack's eyes flick over to where Pulizter is smoking in the corner. He rubs his hands up and down his thighs, trying not to form them into fists, before responding.

"An' I imagines that ladies from any circle of society would value certain other qualities over social class, sir."

The room falls silent once again.

"Well, Arthur, I think we really must be getting home." Mrs. Brooks announces, jumping up from her seat like she's been electrocuted, and turns to Mr. and Mrs. Pulizter. "Thank you ever so much for the lovely dinner. You must allow us to return the favour soon." Then to Katherine. "And you must accompany your parents, Katherine. I should be delighted to hear you play again." The Brooks gather their things in a flurry of handshakes. Amidst the commotion, Jack follows suit.

"I also should be gettin' off." He says, getting to his feet as the butler enters to show out the Brooks. "Thanks fo' the dinner. It was lovely."

A quick round of goodbyes, during which Joseph remains conspicuously silent, Jack retrieves his jacket from the sullen butler and leaves the building just as the Brooks' carriage is pulling away. He stops on the front steps, heaving in a breath of the cold night air, before setting off back toward the lodgehouse, relishing the thought that tomorrow he can finally move into his new apartment. He only gets three houses down the street before-

"Jack!" He turns around to see a breathless Katherine pelting down the pavement toward him, her curls bouncing almost out of their style, the skirt of her long green gown yanked up a little. "Jack, wait up!" He stops. Faces her. "I'm sorry," she breathes, her chest heaving, and Jack has to fix his eyes firmly on her face to prevent them from dropping lower; he is not a rake, "my father, he-"

"Katherine." She stops. Stares. She's two metres away from him and it's already enough to addle his brain.

"Don't, Jack." She says slowly, shaking her head, disbelieving. Damn her, damn her and her ability to see right through him every time. She's half desperate, half angry.

"Katherine, don't go makin' this harder than it already is." Jack fixes his gaze on a spot just over her left shoulder, unable to meet her eyes.

"Jack, they're all idiots, don't listen to them!" Her demeanour cracks.

"One of us has to!" His too. Then, softer. "It's fine if you can jus' ignore 'em, Ace, but I can't. Okay? I can't."

"It's not up to you." Katherine shakes her head. She's not crying, not yet, but even in the dim light of the streetlamps, Jack can see her eyes glistening. He doesn't know what he'll do if she starts crying.

"'S damn well up to me." He replies, hating himself with every word. He wants to back down, to tell her how much she means to him, let her kiss away every insult that has been levelled at him. He wants to lay down beside her and watch her hands wave as she tells him about her latest story. He wants to paint her; he wants to paint her for hours, to study her form until his fingers cramp up. "Fuck," he rubs his eyes, wincing as he touches the tenderness around his bruised one, "I love you, Ace. I loves you so much it nearly kills me."

A pause.

"You've never said that before."

"'S true."

"Then stay." She sounds fierce, but he knows better. She's begging. Pleading.

"I can't. Ace–" He stops. Swallows. Considers. "Arthur seems like a terrible guy, but… he's got more to offers you than me." She opens her mouth to speak, but he holds up a hand. "I's nobody. I know you ain't seein' that right now, but one day you will. In a year, or five, or twenty. An' I don't wants to still be around when you realises I ruined your life."

Jack Kelly does the hardest thing he's ever done in his life. He turns and walks away.

"Jack! Jack Kelly, you get back here right now!" He knows what she'll look like, crying on an empty street in some sort of ball gown, hair askew and make-up running down her cheeks, lit by the streetlamps.

He keeps walking.


	9. Chapter 9

When Jack wakes up the next morning, he feels as if he's been hit by a train. He's been working flat out for months, and for what? Nothing. The most important thing in his life has just crumbled around him. He runs a weary hand over his face and forces himself up, shivering in the early morning breeze. This time of year is the worst time to be sleeping outside. And then he remembers. He won't be. Today is the day he leaves the lodgehouse. It's fitting, perhaps.

Jack dresses and then takes his time packing up his meagre collection of possessions. A couple of extra clothes, half of them more hole than fabric, his drawings, Katherine's copy of Romeo and Juliet. He squeezes his eyes closed. He will not cry. Jack's father used to tell him that men didn't cry. He's not cried, in front of anyone at least, since he was eight. His father's funeral. His father would have been disappointed in him. He wraps them all in the thin blanket he calls a bed and ties it off.

He leaves the lodgehouse before the rest of the boys are up. Crutchie will meet him at the apartment later, as they agreed. He can't stand any more goodbyes.

Jack curses the walk for giving him time to think. He doesn't want to think. Whenever he thinks, he thinks about Katherine. It's been less than a day and he's already never regretted anything quite so much in his life. There is an actual, physical pain in his chest that throbs when her face appears, unbidden, in his mind. He wants her so badly and yet she's the one thing he can't have. Who is he kidding? He never had her at all. She was only on loan from high society. Girls like you don't end up with guys like me. The first time she'd kissed him she'd talked about one night. He'd had more than his fair share, he knows that. Guys like him, forever isn't something he gets. He thinks about the cash he has tucked inside the roll of drawings in his little blanket. The bills earmarked for an engagement ring. He's always been a dreamer, but Santa Fe had never raised him so high only to let him fall back to earth. He doesn't blame her – how could he? It wasn't Santa Fe's fault that it was way out west, just like it isn't Katherine's fault that she's too good for him. But seeing her there, playing at that party with a proper gentleman at her side, pearls at her ears. It had brought back to him how foolish it all was. He curses himself for ending it so early, wishes he'd left it up to her to call it off. At least then he could have enjoyed her love a little longer. But she deserves better than scum like him.

The New York air is brisk and cold, the dead leaves on the trees rustling above him as he heads in the direction of the office. He's already in enough hot water with old Joe, these drawings can't be late. It won't be open, of course, the rest of the lazy sods who work there won't be there until at least nine, but he'll post them in and be on his way before the rest of the city is even awake. But as he approaches, he sees two figures. They grow more distinct as he approaches, their outlines sharpening amidst the early morning fog. The Delanceys. Jack curses under his breath, lowering his head and turning up his collar. Usually mocking the two is good sport, but he's tired, and it's two against one, and today is not the day. But as he strides closer, they cross the street to meet him. Shit.

"We's got a present for you, Jack Kelly!" Oscar calls out.

"Oh yeah? I didn't know Santa was hirin' new elves. Ain't you a bit early? An' tall?" Jack plasters on a grin, straightening his shoulders. Oscar, at least, looks like hell, even worse than him. Jack wonders whether it's quite normal to take so much pleasure in that.

"Not from Santa, I'm afraid. This one's direct from Mr. Pulitzer." The men smirk at one another. "See, he says he don't want theivin' scum workin' for 'im no more. Says he wants his book back an' you outta his office. 'Ere." Morris thrusts a piece of paper at him. Jack sets down his blanket package on the pavement beside him and squints at it. _Letter of termination._ This can't be happening. This can't be happening. "Says he wants us to really… hammer that message 'ome."

Jack's eyes dart to his right, gauging the distance to the nearest alleyway. But before he can do anything, Oscar has shoved him up against the wall.

"Looks like that black eye I gave you is healin' real nice. I's thinkin' we should fix that." Jack tries to lash out at the older man, but with little effect. Oscar has well and truly got him, the bricks behind him tearing into his back the more he struggles. And then Morris starts in on him.

They're insatiable. It starts with his stomach, a few good punches to his gut and he's vomiting up last night's fancy dinner. Then his head. Jack doesn't remember much of the encounter, if he's honest, but when he comes to, he's curled up on the pavement, arms over his head in a poor attempt to shield himself from the blows.

When he tries to uncurl himself, a fire relights in his stomach and he only just manages to roll over onto his hands and knees, spewing up bile threaded with blood. It's almost five minutes before his instincts from living on the streets take over and he checks himself. Head first. He raises a hand to his mouth, wincing as his grubby fingers brush a split in his bottom lip. Still, his teeth are all still there, so that's something. His nose isn't broken either, miraculously, but between two black eyes, a split lip, and a gash on his temple where he hit the pavement, he isn't exactly in the best shape. It's only when he tries to stand up that he realises that at least one of his ribs is broken. He heaves himself up, one hand on the brick wall, and closes his eyes, taking breaths as deeply as he can with his broken ribs, until the world stops spinning. Slowly, he lowers his other hand, feeling around before his hand comes into contact with something wet. Oh. Well then. Maybe he is, in fact, in shock. Because, well, there's a fucking broken bottle sticking out of his side. Well, that's going to have to go. _Best to get it over with,_ Jack thinks, rather distantly, before grabbing the neck of the broken bottle and ripping it from his abdomen.

As he doubles over in pain, blood spilling down his side, staining his shirt, his trousers, the ground, he hears the bottle shatter. He grits his teeth and bears through it, thankful, for the first time in his life, to Snyder for teaching him how to bear pain without making a sound. When he looks down, he notices that he's soaked his letter of termination with his own blood. All his worldly possessions, formerly wrapped up in his ragged little blanket, are scattered around him on the ground, save the book that had doubtless been returned to Pulizter by the Delanceys. Probably has his blood spattered across it.

He should probably get back. He'll take the day off, he decides. He probably deserves it.

…

Jack stands in the tiny kitchen of his new apartment, his right hand shrouded in a cloth as he plucks pieces of broken glass out of his side, neck cricked to see the wound in a cracked mirror he has propped against the window. The Delanceys had certainly done a number on him, that's for sure. He winces, tongue stuck out in concentration, as he removes the last piece. It takes all the effort left in him to wrap a piece of cloth around his middle before he collapses against the cabinets and slides to the floor, groaning as the movement jostles his injured ribs. This isn't exactly what he'd had in mind for his first day in his new apartment.

His eyes land on the blood-soaked paper crumpled on the floor beside him. Another problem he'll have to solve. Jack leans his head back and tries to think clearly despite the throbbing of his skull. He's paid three months rent in advance, so he doesn't need to worry about rent immediately. Three months is plenty of time to get another job, he tells himself, not wholly convincingly. But he's graduated from pape-selling now – nobody ever heard of a newsman instead of a newsboy. Maybe he could get a gig drawing for some other paper. But that would take time, time that he doesn't have if he wants to be able to afford to eat. He makes up his mind to head down to the docks the next day and ask if they need any labour. Hauling cargo won't go easy on his broken ribs, but its honest work. He could ask Medda if she needed anything else doing as well – not necessarily painting, but just odd jobs. He could build some sets, hell, he'd clean the toilets if it meant he didn't starve. Sometimes you're too hungry to be proud.

…

The one thing Crutchie wasn't expecting when he unlocked the door to his and Jack's new apartment was a bloodied Jack slumped on the floor of the kitchen. But hey, that's Jack, and that's how Crutchie has ended up on the kitchen floor beside his best friend, frantically pawing at the other boy's neck in an attempt to find a pulse. His sweaty fingers don't manage it, but Jack, at least, registers that he's being touched and opens slow, groggy eyes.

Jack offers to help Crutchie get his things into his room before he offers any explanation. Luckily, Crutchie is having none of it and manages to get most of the slurred story out of Jack before the older boy drags himself to his feet and conducts a wobbly tour of the apartment.

"'S the smaller room," Jack mumbles around a swollen lip, opening the door to Crutchie's room, "but it's the one wi' the fireplace so I was thinkin' it'd be better for your leg."

The room was furnished with a single bed and wardrobe, a cast iron fireplace set into one wall. Atop the bed were several pillows, sheets, and blankets. Crutchie, despite his concern, can't suppress a smile, hobbling over to the bed and setting down his things.

"Did these come with the place?" Crutchie asks, taking a fleecy blanket between his thumb and forefinger reverently. "They's real nice."

"Nah, I bought 'em the other day. Didn't want you gettin' cold – you's got none o' the other boys to keep you warm now." Jack remarks quietly from the doorway, swaying a little. He places a limp hand on the doorframe to steady himself.

"I thinks you's the one who needs worryin' about now." Crutchie rolls his eyes. "C'mon show me your room an' let's get you into bed."

Jack grouses a little about being fine, but takes a few grateful steps across the hall to his room, fumbling with the door handle. Jack's room is a little bigger than Crutchie's, sporting a double iron bedstead with a thin mattress, but it's pathetic. There's no fireplace, no blankets…

"You's bought me all those blankets an' you didn't get yourself any?" Crutchie asks quietly.

"I's got a blanket." Jack wheezes, producing the one he carried his things in from off a hook on the back of the door and stumbling toward the bed, toeing off his boots as he goes. The bed suddenly looks immensely inviting and although he knows he doesn't deserve it, he's acutely aware that, with no job, he could very well be homeless again soon. He might as well enjoy it while it lasts.

…

Once Crutchie has slipped back into the room and surreptitiously draped a few of his new blankets over Jack's sleeping form, he limps into the kitchen and lights a coal fire in the little stove in the kitchen, setting a small black kettle he finds in one of the cupboards atop it. He pulls a stool close and perches beside it, warming his hands at the merrily burning flames. This is the nicest place he's ever lived, but he can't seem to concentrate on the wonder of being in a place that has four rooms for just two people when Jack is sleeping, bruised and bloodied, across the hall.

It's then that his gaze lands on the crumpled, bloodstained piece of paper on the tile floor of the kitchen. Now, Crutchie ain't a snitch. And he ain't a nosy bastard either. But Jack hasn't been himself for a while now, and so he picks it up and unfolds it. Well.

…

It's not until the next day that Crutchie goes to confront Jack about it. He isn't worried – Jack has never let him down. Even during the strike, his brother had always been there for him. He knows that Jack will figure something out, he always does – he can rely on Jack to keep both of them off the streets. But this? Surely Katherine couldn't know about it. She'd have strangled Pulitzer with her bare hands if she'd have known. When Jack isn't awake by seven, Crutchie knocks on his door and, receiving no answer, walks in. That's the moment that he realises something is wrong. Very wrong.

"Jack?" He hobbles over as quickly as his leg will let him and presses his hand to the forehead of his unresponsive friend, pulling back instantly. Jack is scorching hot. He's also not waking up.

Crutchie tears the extra blankets off the bed and has to swallow down the bile that rises in his throat. The thin mattress is soaked through with blood coming from Jack's side. With a gulp, he props his crutch against the side of the bed and sets to work unbuttoning Jack's shirt to get a proper look at the situation. Jack is usually the one who stitches up all of the injuries at the lodgehouse, but Crutchie is sure he can return the favour. That is, at least, until he manages to peel the shirt away from the wound. The shirt drags with it a thin twist of cloth that was presumably a makeshift bandage. Jack's entire side is swollen around several deep gashes, his skin an angry red, a mixture of blood and pus oozing out of him.

This, Crutchie knows, is beyond him. So he goes to the cleverest person he knows.

"So what exactly is it that's so urgent that mother gave me permission to go with you, rather than go to synagogue?" Davey grouses, coming out of the run-down apartment building to meet Crutchie and fiddling with the clip for his kippah.

"It's Jack." Crutchie says, immediately swinging around and setting off with surprising speed.

"What about him?" Davey asks, struggling to keep up.

"He's hurt."

…

"It's infected." Davey pronounces, pressing gently on the wound. Even in unconsciousness, Jack's body reacts, shifting away from the touch.

Even just perching on the end of the bed, Davey can feel the heat radiating off Jack's sweat soaked body. He's rebandaged the wound and changed the bedsheets – nothing he can do about the mattress, that is a lost cause – but Jack is still asleep, if one can call it that. The sleep is restless and spasming, his hair matted to his forehead with sweat.

"What do we do?" Crutchie asks, his voice quiet.

"Um." Davey thinks for a moment. "Garlic. And honey. That's what my mother did when my uncle's wound got infected, she packed it with those."

"And he got better?"

Davey doesn't answer, only looks at him, his dark eyes level and solemn. Crutchie's bottom lip trembles.

"Hey," Davey stands up, awkwardly clapping a hand on the younger boy's shoulder, "Jack's a fighter, he'll come through. Why don't you stay with him while I go and get those, eh?" Crutchie just nods and hobbles over to the bed, sitting down and clutching Jack's hand between two of his own.

Davey walks with steady, even steps until the door of the apartment is closed behind him, then breaks into a sprint, down the stairs and out onto the street, weaving through the crowds to the market. His mother hadn't let him see his uncle when he got that infection in his leg, but he remembers the wailing that came from the back bedroom of the house when he had passed away. There's something inhuman about a wail of mourning, something that stretches back to a time before there was the language to express grief – if there even is now. Davey doesn't want to hear Crutchie or any of the other boys make sounds like that. He doesn't want to let out those sounds himself.


	10. Chapter 10

Katherine doesn't go to work on Friday. She wakes early, shrugging on a silk dressing gown and, perching before the large, ornate writing desk in front of the window, pens a short note to her editor telling him that she's terribly ill. She sends one of the maids to deliver it to her office, determined that by Monday, when she'll be expected in the office again, she will be right as rain. She has a little cry thinking about the pigeonhole in the office's lobby, where Jack used to sneak in little sketches of her or watercolour sunsets painted on discarded handkerchiefs. She considers getting out the scrapbook she's been keeping under the bed, but decides against it. She doesn't want it to be tearstained.

She stays in bed, feigning illness and feeling thoroughly dejected, the whole day. Then she feels guilty for lazing around when Jack will be out in the frosty autumn weather, selling papers as always. Then she thinks that he probably deserves it. Annie, the housemaid, brings her lunch on a tray and gives her a sympathetic look as she sets the tray down. Katherine feels pathetic. She hates it.

On Saturday morning she drags herself out of bed, tames her curls, washes her face, and dresses with intent. So Jack doesn't want her. Fine. She doesn't need him. She spends the morning working on an article. That is, until Greaves, the butler, summons her downstairs, informing her that there's someone at the door. Her heart leaps in her chest momentarily, hoping that it's Jack, before she remembers that she's not supposed to be excited to see him.

She takes her time descending the stairs, purposefully slowing her steps. If it's Jack, then he can damn well wait. Her stomach drops a bit when she sees it's Crutchie.

"Crutchie, if Jack wants to speak to me, then tell him that he can do so himself." She says, a little more snappishly than intended, before the boy can even get his mouth open. Crutchie's face, painted white with cold and shock, darkens.

"No, actually, he can't." Crutchie says, more harshly than she's ever heard him speak before. "He's ill, Katherine, real ill, and he's askin' for you."

"Ill?" She pales.

"Yeah. Your father told the Delanceys to soak 'im, an' now Davey says he's got an infection. So lord knows why he wants you around, but he keeps on cryin' out for you in 'is sleep, so get yoursel' over to our apartment." With that, the boy swings round and sets off down the street, not waiting for her.

...

"Katherine, hey-" Davey stands up from his position at the low kitchen table, hunched over, balled fists pressing into his eyes, when she throws open the door.

Katherine flat out ignores him and heads in the direction of Jack's bedroom. It's the only door that's open, so she uses her initiative and stalks in, throwing off her coat as she does so. Jack has curled himself up on the centre of he bare mattress, sweat soaked and shirtless, a large brown stain blooming across the bandage wrapped around him.

"He's more peaceful now, he's stopped shouting in his sleep," she hears Davey tell Crutchie, behind her, "but his temperature hasn't gone down. He woke up for a bit, but just told me that he needed to go to work and then fell asleep again, poor kid."

Katherine drops to her knees behind the bed and reaches out to brush back the curls that are stuck limply to Jack's forehead, wincing as he shifts a little in unconscious response and she gets a full view of the damage the Delanceys had done. Not only is his whole abdomen one enormous purple bruise, but both his eyes are blackened and his lip split and swollen.

"Jack, honey?" She whispers, then, when he doesn't respond, repeats herself, a little louder.

She is rewarded by Jack stirring, shivering, then blinking open woozy, confused eyes. He can't seem to quite focus on her face properly, his pupils blown so wide that she can barely even see a ring of brown around them.

"Kath?" He asks, his voice like sandpaper.

"Hey." She smiles softly, trying not to let the tears that are welling in her eyes spill out and down her cheeks, rosy from the cold outside.

"'M sorry." He mumbles, only just intelligible. Even in his half-conscious state, Katherine can sense the very real distress that lurks in the space between his words. Suddenly, she can no longer be angry at him. She can't even be upset with him, only for him.

"We'll talk it through when you're better, okay? It's alright." Her fingers smooth back the matted hair from his scorching skin. It's like he hasn't even heard her when he next speaks.

"'M sorry I's screwed up. I love you."

Her heart grows about two sizes in her chest. She knows he's delusional, knows he barely even knows she's here, but he loves her, damnit, and that means there's hope. It means that, if she can get him to pull through this, she might have someone to believe in still.

"Oh, Jack, honey." A pause. He closes his eyes. Katherine can't work out whether it's because of tiredness or regret.

"D'you still love me?" He rasps, barely audible.

"Of course I do, you impossible boy." Katherine chokes. "Of course." He seems calmed by the words.

"It hurts." He mumbles. He's so young. It's easy for her to forget that, even more now he's technically older than her. He's still just a child. It's just that he doesn't have a rich family to patch him up when he falls down.

"I know, honey." She shushes, trying to soothe him.

Jack doesn't speak for a few moments after that because he's coughing so violently that Katherine wouldn't be entirely surprised if he managed to hack a lung up and onto the floor. He doesn't though, only a little blood that spatters across the mattress, all the while clutching his ribs in white-hot agony.

"Please don't let 'em take me back." He croaks out, when the coughing is finally over.

"Let who take you back? Take you back where?" Katherine frowns.

"The bulls. Synder. The Refuge."

Her heart breaks a little more.

"I won't. Don't worry, I won't."

A pause.

"'M cold. It was cold in the Refuge." He shivers, proving his point. Katherine sighs, reaching out and cupping his face, ghosting her thumb back and forth over his cheekbone.

"I know you feel cold, Jack, but you've got a fever. We've got to try and keep you cool, okay?"

"Don't want blue fingers again." He mumbles.

Katherine reaches out and gently pries his arms from where they're wrapped around him, enveloping his trembling, clammy hands in hers. Jack whimpers as she does so, feeling his broken rib shift inside of him.

"I won't let them go blue, see?"

Jack nods and closes his eyes, his shoulders relaxing for the first time since she arrived. Slowly, his laboured, rough breathing evens out and she lets go of his hands. Even blackened and bruised, he looks so young in his sleep. Vulnerable. None of the endless twitchy, nervous energy that he carries around with him in wakefulness like a particularly heavy burden. With a sigh, Katherine leaves him there and heads back toward the kitchen.

But before she rounds the corner, she stops, hearing the two boys talking in the kitchen. It's bad manners to eavesdrop, but she's a reporter. It's basically her job, isn't it?

"We needs a doctor, Davey." Crutchie. That's Crutchie's voice.

"And it's Jack's money, Crutchie. We can't just take it!" Katherine can almost see Davey now, spluttering out his usual protests. "It's barely enough for a doctor anyway."

"He's dyin'."

"We don't know that. And he'd be devastated. You know what he's got it set aside for."

"He can't marry her if he's dead, can he? Some ring ain't worth Jack's life."

Oh. Jack was saving for a ring? For marriage? They'd talked about it, of course, but it had always felt so distant, years in the future. But then, few serious courtships lasted longer than a few months before engagement and theirs had been more serious than most. Katherine quite expects the prospect to terrify her, expects to run in the opposite direction screaming in a most unladylike manner, because she's about to turn nineteen and her beau is thinking about marriage. But the idea of being married to Jack… well, it's not unpleasant. She'd always hated the idea of marriage, of being trapped, caring for a husband and children, playing the part of a pretty accessory at a husband's odious business meetings. But with Jack, she never feels trapped. With him, she feels freer than ever. Jack doesn't want, as he's stressed to her many times, a normal girl. He wants her. Beautiful. Smart. Independent. She turns, looks through the doorway at the man laying sick there. She doesn't want to be anywhere more than at his side.

"If he gets worse." Inside the kitchen, Davey concedes.

Katherine steels herself and walks in. Davey shoots to his feet, throwing an accusing look Crutchie's way. Crutchie, at least, has the decency to look down at the floor. She knows that he might never forgive her for her father setting the Delanceys on Jack – hell, she might never forgive herself – but that problem could wait. That problem could wait until Jack was well enough for her to leave him to go and knock her father's lights out.

"Katherine. How is he?" Davey steps forward.

"Okay." She nods, slowly. "I'm, um, I'm going to call on my friend Rose. Her husband, he's a doctor. I'll bring him back here directly." Crutchie's eyes ricochet up to the other boy.

"That's kind of you, Katherine, but, uh," Davey scratches at the back of his neck awkwardly, "I don't really know if we's got the money for a doctor."

"Let me deal with that." She says firmly, striding toward the door.

...

"John!" Rose calls over her shoulder, beckoning for Katherine to step in out of the drizzle which has begun to seep out of the dense grey clouds overhead. "Kathy, darling, you're white as a sheet." Katherine only nods, out of breath from her journey across the city.

"Miss Pulitzer!" The man in question emerges at the top of the stairs. He's older than the two women, in his late twenties or early thirties, and sports a suit in a rather daring shade of blue. "What a delight to see you again, I haven't had the pleasure of your company since the wedding-"

"It's lovely to see you again too, Dr. Graceton," Katherine interrupts breathlessly, "but I'm afraid this isn't a social call. A friend of mine, he's terribly ill, and I am in desperate need of your assistance."

The friendly expression morphs into one of concern, as if he's taken off his gentleman's clothes and put on his doctor's coat.

"Why, of course! Let me get my equipment." He turns and Katherine offers up her thanks.

"Katherine, you're ghostly pallid." Rose presses the back of her hand to her friends forehead, the picture of elegant concern. "You must allow me to come with you."

"Oh Rose, you're too kind; but-"

"Nonsense, you must be quite out of your mind with worry." Rose takes up her coat and hat from a hook beside the door in the entrance way.

Within minutes, the couple are hurrying along beside her back towards Jack's apartment. Katherine wants to curse Rose for her smart heeled boots and click along the pavement painfully slowly, but she bites her tongue. They're only trying to help. Trying to help. Is that what she's doing? Is she trying to help? Is she trying to help Jack? Or is she trying to help her selfish self, because she doesn't think that she can live without him?

When they enter the apartment, Katherine sees Rose's face fall. She could throw her arms around Dr. Graceton for being so tactfully unreactive, merely asking to be shown to the bedroom. Davey and Crutchie lead him through, leaving Katherine and Rose in the kitchen, the hem of the former's skirt dripping a melancholy tune on the tiles. Rose opens her mouth as if to say something, then presses her lips back together.

"It's alright." Katherine sighs. "You can say it." Rose looks at her.

"Is this the home of your Mr. Kelly?"

Katherine nods in response. Rose opens and closes her mouth a few times, censoring herself as she casts her eyes over the apartment. Tiles spattered with blood and dirt. Cobwebs covering the kitchen cabinets in a fine film of silky threads, interlacing, interlocking, sealing them shut but protecting nothing. They're bare inside, both women know that without even looking. Rose steps forward, examining. Her eyes light upon the mirror propped on the sideboard. In it, Katherine's face is distorted. Cracked in half. Pained. She whips round to face the girl she's known from their infancy and asks the question that has been burning inside her for weeks, her voice eerily calm.

"Is this really what you want, Katherine?" Rose finally asks. Katherine knows she isn't just asking about the apartment.

"More than anything." Her voice comes out less shaky than she anticipated.

"And will you still want it when you haven't eaten for days?" Rose's calm demeanour snaps, turning away from her friend and glimpsing her own shattered reflection. "When you're shivering with cold because you can't afford to light a fire?"

"That won't happen, Rose. Jack wouldn't let that happen."

"But if he does?"

"We've been through worse together and come out the other side." She thinks of the strike. Thinks of Jack's torture in her father's cellar. Thinks of the way that he held her even through that. She's never been sure of very much, but she feels quite certain of this. It's only when Jack's beside her that she feels that she's doing the right thing. And sometimes, just sometimes, she glimpses that he feels the same way.

Rose nods tersely, her back still to Katherine. She only looks round again when her husband enters the room.

"I'm afraid there's nothing I can do for this, Miss Pulitzer. It's an infection alright, and a nasty one, and it's been exacerbated by malnourishment and sleep deprivation, I'd wager." Dr. Graceton declares.

"Malnourishment?" She squeaks.

"This man has not been eating enough for quite some time." The doctor frowns, choosing his next words carefully. "I see this in much of my work with the… less fortunate; parents or older siblings foregoing food to feed the younger members of the family. I gather the crippled boy is his brother?"

 _Less fortunate._ Those words again. They sound so unbearably kind, measured, when spoken from upper class lips. She wonders what they make her. Unfortunate? She's been fortunate her whole life and one thing is for sure, none of her brothers had ever told her stories about Santa Fe to ease her through the nightmares. If she can have love or fortune, family or fortune, then the fortune be damned. She can do just as well without.

"They grew up together." Katherine tells him. Dr. Graceton nods without understanding.

"Well, you're doing exactly the correct thing. Keep the wound clean and dressed, and when he's lucid try to get some food and drink into him. Between the beating he's received and the infection, he's going to need something to keep him going."

The doctor bends to pick up the bag by his feet. Katherine doesn't know what to say.

"Is it – will he-"

"I'm afraid I don't know." Dr. Graceton slowly sets his bag back down on the floor, his expression carved into a careful figure of sympathy. "His fever will worsen and at some point it will either break, or it won't. I'm sorry. I'll be back in a few days."


	11. Chapter 11

When Davey returns to the apartment that evening, accompanied, this time, by his mother, sister, and an insistent Les, he finds Katherine, Crutchie, and Jack all huddled together on the bed. The sight is almost comical, Jack, almost a foot taller than both of them, sandwiched between them in the first peaceful sleep Davey's seen him in all day. Crutchie is sprawled on his front, crutch abandoned on the floor, with one thin arm slung over Jack's chest, a veil of protective instinct. Jack's head is nestled on Katherine's stomach, carefully orientated so that that the soft fabric of her dress doesn't press against and irritate his wounds. The delicate fingers, still tangled in Jack's curls, suggest that she was stroking his hair when they all fell asleep.

"Oh." Sarah lets out a soft gasp, her hands coming up to cover her mouth as her eyes scan the horrendous extent of Jack's injuries.

Esther shushes her, requests various supplies of her children and, once they're out the room, bustles over to the bedside, shaking both Crutchie and Katherine awake. Crutchie sits up, bleary-eyed, as is soon persuaded to retire to his own bedroom, having been assured several times that should Jack's condition change even slightly that he will be woken at once. Katherine, however, is more difficult to remove. Having ushered Crutchie out, Esther turns to Katherine, who is just staring down at the boy in her lap. Esther's brisk demeanour softens as she wanders over and squeezes Katherine's shoulder.

"You should go home and get some rest."

"I don't want to leave him." Katherine blinks up at her and Esther is painfully reminded of her own feelings when Mayer was injured.

"I'll send Les to get you if anything changes –"

"But –"

"Katherine – it is Katherine, right?" Esther asks, perching on the bed beside Katherine. The younger woman nods, dropping her gaze to Jack's bloodied face in her lap. "I'll make sure he's okay. I'll treat him like he's one of my own." Just seeing him lying there, so much like her Aaron, he might as well be her own. She squeezes Katherine's shoulder again, trying to provide what meagre comfort she can. "It sounds like you need to have a conversation with your father anyhow."

Katherine can't believe she's forgotten how this all started – how she started this all off by giving Jack that stupid book. She nods slowly and stands to gather her things.

Esther watches her slope out of the room, sees the final backward glance at Jack's sleeping form, and wants desperately to say something, to offer some comfort to the woman. Comfort isn't easy to come across these days, it seems. She stays silent. Katherine leaves.

On the bed, Jack stirs, as if he can sense the loss of her presence, as if Katherine's absence is itself a presence, something hollow and disturbing, looming over his trembling frame. It's enough to bring Esther's attention back to him. She has to hand it to Katherine and the boys, they've done their best to take care of him and even she has to admit that there's little she can do. The fever will get worse no matter what she does. Her eyes light on his wrist, the joint's unnatural twist barely disguised by the grubby bandage that she had wrapped around it just a few days ago. He hasn't been taking care of himself properly. When did he ever?

"Mother?" Esther turns to see Sarah hovering in the doorway, her eyes fixed not on the woman she addresses, but the man on the bed.

"Come in; set it down here." Esther tells her, the firmness of her tone enough to snap her daughter into action. Sarah enters, in her arms a wide, shallow bowl of cold water, a cloth draped over the side, and she sets it down beside the bed.

Esther crosses the room, business-like, and begins, with gentle fingers reddened from years of work, to unwind the bandages that span Jack's torso. He shifts in his sleep, flinching from her touch as her fingers brush across the swollen purple bruises that decorate his abdomen in a garish pattern. When she exposes the wound, or rather, wounds – the bottle had pierced his side in more than one place – it's difficult not to wince with vicarious pain at the sight; swollen, angry, bleeding.

As she finishes redressing it, Jack's eyes blink slowly open, clouded by fever, glassy and unfocused.

"Mrs. Jacobs?" He croaks.

"How're you feeling Jack?" She smiles a bit, stroking his hair back from his sweaty forehead. His guard down, Jack keens into her palm like a cat, relishing the gentle touch.

"Like shit." He grumbles, his eyes starting to drop closed before snapping open wide, flitting between Esther and Sarah. "Shit. I's sorry, I shouldn't 'a sworn in front o' a lady."

"It's alright, Jack." A smile tugs at the corners of the woman's mouth.

"I needs you to do somethin' fo' me." He coughs.

"What might that be?"

"There's some money between some drawin's under the bed. I's savin' for a ring fo' Kath."

Well. Esther looks down at the young man on the bed and marvels once again at him. She will never, ever, no matter what story Davey and Les come back full of on any particular day, understand this boy. He's _dying_. And he's not thinking about himself.

"That's wonderful, Jack." She says softly. It's like he doesn't hear it.

"'F I don't – 'f I don't make it-"

"Jack –" She interrupts, seeing her daughters eyes widen as she scurries out of the room.

"No, I ain't stupid." Jack forces his eyes open and props himself up on one elbow with strength he didn't even know he still had. "'F I don't make it, I needs you to take that money. I needs you to show it to Kath. I needs her to know I's serious 'bout wantin' to marry her. An' then I wants you to use it to help Crutchie." Esther stares at him in disbelief as he looks up at her through hooded, fever hazed eyes, clutching his ribs as if his own arm wrapped around himself is the only thing keeping him from falling completely to pieces. "He ain't got nobody. You needs to look after him for me."

"Jack –"

"Please." He sounds tired. Defeated.

"Of course." She confirms, leaning down and helping to ease him back down onto the mattress. He winces, but doesn't complain even when she perches next to him and cards her fingers through his hair.

"Thanks." He mutters, eyes closed, already slipping back into that burning, feverish sleep. Then he adds: "Mrs. Jacobs?"

"Mm?"

She continues to stroke his head. Looking down at him, she's reminded of Aaron. Tears well in her eyes at the thought of the little boy she'd lost. He'd looked so much like Jack, with his dark curly hair and his easy smile. Her perfect firstborn. In his little coffin, he'd looked even more like Jack now, pale and drawn. She almost doesn't hear him when he mumbles:

"I wish my mama 'ad been like you."

…

By the time Katherine lets herself into the Pulitzer family home, it's almost ten in the evening. She knows that her father will be in his study. So, that's where she goes.

She doesn't bother to knock on the tall, oaken door. Such behaviour, she knows, is the height of rudeness to her father and, somehow, she doesn't feel like being very polite. She pushes it open with no warning, the brass knob slamming into wall on the other side.

"How could you?" It's less of a question, more of a snarl. Behind her, the door slams closed.

Behind his mahogany, bridge-like desk, Joseph Pulitzer looks up at her over the gold rims of his glasses. The ornate golden desk lamp throws his face into peculiar shadows, the deep lines carved into the stone of his forehead cut even deeper in the low light. He leans back in the plush leather chair and removes the cigar from between his lips, looking his daughter up and down like a wild animal examining its opponent. Here, in the study with the green patterned wallpaper, they are in the jungle.

"Katherine." Tapping the ash from his cigar, he places it down on the intricately engraved ashtray on his desk and reaches up to remove his wiry spectacles, carefully folding them away.

"Don't you _Katherine_ me!" She snaps. "How could you do such a thing?"

"I assume you're referring to that distasteful business with Mr. Kelly." He says, the sentence unrushed and leisurely.

"Distasteful? Distasteful? Jack is dying!" She spits, stalking over to the desk and slamming her palms down on the green baize top.

"Katherine, really, don't be so hyperbolic."

"You think I'm being hyperbolic?" In the face of his calmness, Katherine lowers her voice from its prior shrillness and into something dark and dangerous. "Do you have any idea what those men did to him?"

"The Delanceys merely reclaimed my property for me. Mr. Kelly should be thankful that I didn't have him charged with theft."

The man is painfully casual, looking at Katherine like she is a cat pawing at a ball of wool. There's a hint of amusement there, but it's something dry, something wry, hiding in the edges of his pupils, hidden by a scientific disinterest. Katherine realises, for the first time, that the way her father looks at her is not, has never been, loving or even fond. It's appraisal. Like she's just another one of his employees. Dispensable. She hasn't met her goals this quarter.

"I lent him the book." She says, squeezing her eyes closed and her hands into fists on the desktop.

"I am aware. The book was not yours to lend." Pulitzer takes another long drag from his cigar.

"You had that library put together for our education." Her eyes snap open, a challenge.

Between thick fingers, studded with signet rings, her father twirls his thoughtful cigar. The action is suddenly and inexplicably infuriating and before she can even think it through, Katherine snatches it from his fingers and stubs it out on the ashtray with considerable venom. In the process, the smouldering end presses into the centre of her palm. It's painful, but somehow grounding. She resists her instinct to flinch, reminding herself of the similar marks which litter Jack's back beneath the purple bruises. He looks at her with a twinge of irritation.

"Yes, your education, yours and your siblings, not for some street urchin to sit in my parlour and quote texts he doesn't understand at my dinner party guests." Katherine doesn't even know how to respond to that. "I hope that his unemployment will put an end to the unladylike way you have been carrying on with him, Katherine. I fear I have indulged-"

 _Wait._ Katherine's mind, racing with ways to win a point in this high stakes match, screeches to a grinding halt.

"Unemployment?"

"Oh, has he not yet informed you?" For the first time in the exchange, a smug little smile flits across her father's lips. "How... interesting. The Delanceys delivered the news to him – I will not tolerate having thieves under my employment."

 _Thieves._ The categorisation bounces around the inside of her skull like the echoes of worker's voices in a railroad tunnel.

"You fired him?" The question is barely audible.

"You can hardly be surprised, Katherine. I am, however, surprised that he didn't tell you – perhaps he doesn't care for you quite as much as you suspected."

She knows that he's trying to get under her skin, but that doesn't mean that the jibe rattles her any less. What if he didn't trust her? What if he didn't love her the same way she loved him? He certainly hadn't said it back when she'd told him – that night at the window when she'd made the stupidest mistake of her life, giving him that book. But – oh. She can't believe she missed it, too wrapped up in her worry for him. He had told her that he loved her. He'd told her that very day, in his short spell of lucidity when she'd arrived. _'M sorry I's screwed up. I love you._ He loves her. _I love you._ Sure, he had a raging fever, but. _I love you._

"He didn't tell me," she retorts, "because he is laying in bed dying of an infection. An infection which he got as a result of your cronies stabbing him in the side with a broken bottle."

"That is unfortunate, but hardly a result of my actions." Her father's expression doesn't change. Katherine splutters.

" _Hardly a_ – I don't – I can't even look at you right now."

She turns away, throwing her hands up. How could he be so callous? Jack and he, they were enemies, but this? This was too much. Too much.

"Believe me, the feeling is mutual." Katherine turns on her heel to find her father rising from his chair and turning his back on her. Even after so many years of such treatment, the rejection is sharp and piercing. A stab in the gut. A bottle in the side. "I do hope that you have not been in that boy's bedroom in your misguided attempts to care for him, Katherine. I have tolerated your indiscretions long enough, but if I find out –"

"Of course I have!" She interrupts, half laughing though there's no amusement in it.

Pulitzer turns back to face her, something flashing in his eyes. _Finally._ Katherine can't help but feel a sick sense of satisfaction at cracking his cold exterior. There's vindication in it, knowing that she's lit the flame of anger lurking in his gaze, that her 'indiscretions' infuriate him so. The feeling is dulled by the knowledge that the concern is not for her wellbeing, but for his own reputation, but she's had years to get used to that. She's got under his skin. That's all that matters.

"Katherine-" He slams his fist into the desk as she had done just moments before.

"I sat in that room and I stroked his hair and held him while he shook with fevered nightmares thanks to what you did to him! Do you know what that room was like? It was barren. No sheets on the bed, couldn't even afford clean bandages 'cause you pay him half of what you pay the other illustrators and even that's more than he's had in his life. He forked out for a two bedroom apartment because that boy you had sent to the refuge? He's a cripple and Jack wanted him to have somewhere warm to stay so his leg doesn't get worse. And if he dies, then it's going to be your fault!" It all comes out in one breath, no pause. She sucks in a second one, quite prepared to continue, but he's shouting out her, matching her angry tone for the first time.

"I will not tolerate you speaking to me like this-"

"What are you going to do about it?" It's almost a taunt. "Lock me up? I have a career, Father. A life! A man who, if he survives, wants to be my _husband-_ "

Pulizter's visage darkens, his aging, greying skin moving through shades of red until it settles on a vivid purple undertone. It's angry, swollen, like the bruises that stretch across Jack's upper body. He stalks around the desk and grabs her arm, not caring for the similar bruises that will form there as a result of his tight grip.

"That boy will marry you over my dead body-" He snarls down at her, but she raises her eyes to meet his gaze and wrenches her arm from his grip.

"And I will never forgive you over his."

Katherine manages to get out of the study and halfway up the stairs before she begins sobbing.

…

The next morning is church, but Katherine isn't feeling very Christian. Her father is, of course, Jewish, but her mother isn't and has remained insistent since they were children on dragging the entire brood of them to church on a Sunday morning. Her father comes along, though she's never known why. It's not like he knows anything about love and forgiveness. She joins her family at the base of the stairs, where they all wait for her mother. Katherine knows that her father is trying to catch her eye, but whatever it is he wants to say, she doesn't want to hear it. She busies herself with straightening the Edith's collar and licks her thumb to wipe a smudge of raspberry jam off Constance's cheek. The girl squirms away from Katherine, weakly protesting the gesture.

She finds herself seated opposite her father in the carriage, but she makes a point of staring determinedly out of the window. Ralph is the only one who speaks to her, asking if she is feeling quite well, and she replies that she just feels a little nauseous. Two minutes of uncomfortable silence later, he enquires after her bandaged hand. Katherine looks down at it, almost surprised to see the white fabric wrapped around her gloveless hand. She slips her delicate white silk gloves back on over it and makes a dismissive remark about burning it.

Annie had been kind, the night before. Knocking on her door with an _I'm sure it's none o' my business, Miss, but is there anything I can do for you?_ Katherine had allowed her to clean the wound and wrap her hand in a snowy bandage, all the while wondering if things would have been different had she been around to do the same for Jack. If she hadn't have invited him to that dinner, if she hadn't have given him that book, might he have come to her after the Delanceys had hurt him? Might she have been able to care for his wounds, clean them and bandage them? Might she have been able to prevent all of this?

The carriage stops. She shakes her head, willing herself out of her reverie. Such wonderings wouldn't help Jack now. They enter the church, making polite conversation with other wealthy families just like them. Katherine wonders that they don't sense the hypocrisy of it all.

When the minister reaches the sermon, he steps up into the pulpit and starts talking about forgiveness. Katherine, seated (intentionally) at the opposite end of the pew from her father, shoots a glance over at him. He stares stoically ahead. Katherine wonders if he even hears it. If he even cares. When they kneel down to pray, she prays for Jack.

When they finally emerge from the church, after a painfully long service throughout which Katherine feels incredibly guilty for having her thoughts, despite attempting to turn them heavenward, focused completely on her boyfriend, she sets off at a determined pace.

"Katherine, where are you going? The carriage is parked over here!" Her mother calls out to her, admonishing. Katherine turns on her heel but continues walking backwards as she responds.

"I've got a call to make. Don't expect me home for dinner!" She tries to sound cheerful, turning back around. Yet, before she's made it even a few paces further, she feels a hand on her shoulder.

"Katherine, I will not abide this." Her father warns her, turning her to face him and looking down at her, the very picture of sternness.

Pursing her lips in annoyance, she rolls her shoulder out of his grip.

"Whose dead body is it going to be, Father?"

…

When she arrives, it's just Esther and Sarah in the kitchen. With Davey and Les having gone home; to get some rest, Esther tells her; she suddenly feels more uncomfortable than she would have expected. Esther's dark eyes are kindly and maternal as she offers her a cup of coffee, but Sarah's bore into her like a drill, looking her up and down as if trying to figure out what exactly it is that she's doing there. Katherine's skin prickles, half discomfort and half ruffled. All she wants is to march straight through to Jack's room, but objectively there's no rush and her father was right about one thing: this would affect her reputation. So, she removes her silk gloves and offers to help make the coffee.

Jack, according to the Jacobs, is not doing well. His fever had eased a little overnight but was raging when they checked on him that morning and was continuing to build. Apparently Dr. Graceton had called on them while she was at church – and doesn't she just curse herself for missing his visit – and told them that Jack's fever would likely end, for better or worse, at some point that night. It is a waiting game. She drinks coffee with Esther and a sullen Sarah, both of whom intermittently work on darning various items of clothing in between sips, for what she judges to be a respectable amount of time before rising and thanking them. Katherine wonders what they must think of her, as she wanders through into Jack's room, what they think, as they darn socks and shirts, of the high society lady before them who wouldn't know where to start with the mending but who was embroidering samplers at the age of six. Then she wonders whether, when her and Jack get married, if he will expect her to be able to do such things. Goodness knows she'd make a terrible housewife. She dismisses the thought as quickly as it arrives. She'll cross that bridge when she comes to it.

When she walks in, she first sees Crutchie, laid on his side with both arms wrapped tightly around a shaking Jack. Her heart breaks a little more.

"Hey." She whispers, picking her way across the creaky floorboards as she goes round the other side of the bed.

"Hey." Crutchie looks up, turning a little red. "He… he was havin' his usual nightmares, I think. Didn't wan' him hurtin' hisself no more when he's flailin' about."

"That's sweet of you." Katherine nods, perching on the side of the bed and leaning over to glance at Jack's face, drawn tight and covered with a sheen of sweat. "Does he have nightmares often?" She doesn't think she wants to know the answer. She asks anyway.

"All the time." Crutchie says, looking down at Jack too. "I means, all's us do, but Jack gets 'em bad. 'S why he sleeps in his penthouse, 'cos he don't want to wake the little'uns wi' his screamin'."

Katherine nods, solemnly. How is this the man she loves, she wonders, staring down at him. How can she love him when he refuses to share all of this pain with her? She shakes her head, only to herself though, and vows that if – when, she forces herself to think, when – he comes out of this, she will shoulder his burden. He has taken so much of hers away. It's about time she returned the favour.

"About the Refuge?" She forces herself to ask. Her brain is screaming at her that she doesn't want to know, but she has to. She has to understand.

"Mainly." Crutchie nods, not meeting her eyes. "Sometimes jus' about some beatin' he's gotten. He didn't jus' get those in the Refuge. He don't talk 'bout his old man much, but I think he screwed Jack up 'fore he was even on the streets."

Katherine nods. Waits. Thinks.

"I know that you're mad at me for what my father did, Crutchie." She says, finally.

"Oh." Crutchie doesn't meet her eyes.

He looks guiltily down between his body and Jack's, but there's no pleasure in his reaction for Katherine. She should be the one feeling ashamed, she knows. She doesn't know quite what to say.

"I'm sorry;" is what she finally settles for, then adds, "he's a – a scabber."

"That's fo' sure." Crutchie snorts quietly.

"I told him so."

Crutchie nods, quietly impressed. A pause.

"D'you wanna gimme a hand holdin' 'im still?" He reddens again, shrugging a little. Katherine doesn't laugh at him though. She knows an olive branch when she hears one. "'S jus' when he kicked out in 'is sleep before, he caught my bum leg."

"Sure." She nods, lowering herself down to sandwich Jack's scalding frame between them, feeling his trembling.

"Katherine?" Crutchie asks wetly, meeting her eyes over the curve of Jack's jaw with his big brown ones.

"Yes?"

"D'you think he's gonna die?" The question nearly breaks her.

She realises, suddenly, just how young Crutchie is, too. He's fifteen. He should be in school. He should be running around with Herbert on the cricket field, not lying on a bare mattress with a bum leg worrying about his big brother dying.

"I don't know, Crutchie." Her answer nearly breaks them both.

They stay like that for a long time, holding Jack as his sleep becomes less peaceful, more fevered. They hold him as nightmares plague him and he lashes out and cries out in pain. It only gets worse as the morning wears on into afternoon, the afternoon into evening.

People come in and go out like they're on a conveyor belt. The boys from the lodgehouse show up at some point. Race shushes the little ones. They don't understand. Some of them, like Karl, try to climb up into bed beside Jack, try to wake him up. Each of the Jacobs poke their heads around the door. Jack gets worse.

As it nears midnight, Katherine repeatedly tenses and relaxes her arm, trying to shake out the pins and needles without letting go of Jack. She knows it's silly, but she wonders if she lets go of him if she might never catch hold of him again. Her impossible boy.

"I don't know what I'd do wi'out him." Crutchie whispers.

"Me neither."


	12. Chapter 12

When Jack’s fever breaks, just after midnight, it’s not in the way that Katherine had thought it might. She expects it to break like a shattering plate; Jack, after all, never did much of anything without a little showiness, a little style. But it’s not that characteristic. None of this is. Instead, Jack’s fever breaks like a wave on the seashore, climbing to a trembling crescendo before overbalancing, collapsing in on itself and down, down, into a steady undulation. It’s terrifying, watching him plummet and not knowing whether he’s going to stop or whether he’s just going to keep on falling out of her reach. At some point, Crutchie grabs her hand and holds on tight, as if by holding on to her tight enough, he might be able to hold on to Jack too. 

But then Jack’s breathing settles into a steady rhythm. He isn’t the picture of health by any means, but it’s different, somehow, this sleep. His temperature is still sky-high, but somehow it’s less feverish, possessing less of that teeth-chattering intensity about it. It’s less dangerous. It doesn’t remind her of everything she stands to lose. For the first time in days, she can look at his face and feel something of the calmness that his visage usually bestows on her. She can pretend that the yellowish smudges on his face aren’t bruises, but the paint that’s always streaked across some part of him. She can hope.

Within a week, Jack is back to his usual self, physically, if not mentally. Katherine can’t justify taking much more time off work and he assures her that he doesn’t want her to, that he’s abjectly _fine_. Katherine doesn’t think he dare be anything else now that Medda has taken up position as his full-time carer. In the commotion of his illness, nobody had really thought to let her know. When she found out, she’d been fuming. The boys, therefore, were back to hawking papes as usual and the Jacobs had been cleared of their responsibilities with begrudging thanks from Medda. Jack, for his part, is both grateful for and resentful of the constant coddling. Admittedly, when he couldn’t even make it to the bathroom down the hall on his own for the first few days, he didn’t have much say in the matter, but now that he’s up and about he is making his displeasure known. 

Katherine calls round on Friday evening, sprinting over to the apartment after work, hitching up her skirts in a manner that would make her mother swoon. Medda greets her at the door, but she hasn’t seen him for days and he nearly died, for goodness sake, so the older woman doesn’t even try to hold her back. It’s only when she raises her hand to knock on his bedroom door that she realises that she doesn’t quite know how to talk to him anymore.

“‘S not locked.” Comes a gruff, but slightly amused voice from behind the door. 

Katherine pushes it open but stops in the doorway, unsure of herself. She doesn’t like this, this feeling of being an outsider to him once again. She’d had enough of that during the strike.

Jack stands at the window in just his trousers, suspenders dangling uselessly by his sides. It’s strange to see him like this, so unprepared for action. He’s barefoot. She doesn’t think she’s ever seen him barefoot before. She can see every notch of his spine through the pale, scarred skin of his back. It very nearly breaks her heart.

“Hi.” She says, dumbly, cursing herself for her sudden lack of words. Aren’t words what she’s supposed to be good at? 

He turns around, having clearly been expecting Medda, and his face splits into a wide, Jack Kelly grin. Oh, how she’s missed that smile. The bruises on his face have faded now, and the swelling on his lip gone down. He almost looks normal, if she doesn’t drop her eyes to the bandages around his middle and the bruises which bloom out across his skin from beneath them.

“Kath.” He breathes, like a prayer. 

On Sunday, they’d had a reading from Genesis where God spoke the earth into being. Jack saying her name feels a little bit like that. She clears her throat. 

“You’re looking better.” She kicks herself immediately. That’s it? That’s all she can come up with?

“Yeah,” Jack reaches up to scratch at the back of his neck, averting his eyes, “I’s feelin’ it too. Ribs still hurt, but I’s had worse.” 

That’s when she bursts into tears. There’s no reason for it, of course, it’s nothing he’s said, but it’s his voice, low and gravelly and grounding and _there_ that reminds her quite how close she was to losing him. Jack, for his part, has absolutely no idea what the fuck is going on. 

He crosses the room and sweeps her into his arms. She clings to him like he’s some sort of lifeboat. His broken ribs burn inside him, but he can stand it. Medda wanders in through the doorway, but stops in her tracks at the sight of Katherine sobbing into Jack’s chest. Medda mouths a confused question at him, but Jack just cocks his head to the side, flummoxed. He’s as confused as she is. She backs out of the room, closing the door quietly behind her. 

Jack is, of course, baffled. He has no idea what he’s supposed to do with this, with her, and he’s never been good with crying, so he just holds her, rubbing soothing circles into her back. It’s only when her sobs dissolve into sniffles that he dares to speak.

“Did I do somethin’, Katherine?” He asks quietly, turning his head to press a gentle kiss to her temple. “Please tell me I ain’t the one makin’ you cry like this?”

“No, no,” she shakes her head against his shoulder, her voice muffled, “I just – I thought I was going to lose you.”

“Hey now,” he pulls her closer despite the fire in his ribs and forces some lightness into his tone, “you can’t get rid of me that easily.”

“I don’t want rid of you.” She hiccups, half laughing at his response. 

Jack stares over her shoulder at a mark on the opposite wall. There must have been a picture hung there before he moved in, a perfect eight-by-six inch rectangle of unfaded wallpaper set in the middle of the dulled pattern. It’s cracked, though, this cleaner area, like the picture was hung there to cover it up. There’s rot in the wall. He’ll have to fix that. 

“I’s sorry, Kath.” He sighs, eyes still fixed on that point. “I’s sorry I hurt you. I jus’… I can’t be the man that you’s lookin’ back on when you’s eighty and thinkin’ I’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to you.” She pulls away from him then, swiping her hand across her face, and he’s convinced he’s blown it. _Well done, Kelly. Gold star._

“Jack Kelly, you are the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” She snaps, looking up at him, eyes bright and wet and fierce. _Oh. Well then._ “Do you love me?” She demands. 

Jack looks at her, running a hand through his hair and down to rub at the back of his neck. How had he lived this long without being able to touch her? How had he ever thought it was a good idea to subject himself to a life without her? He tries to remind himself of why he’s doing all this, why he does anything he does. Better for her. Better for them. Better for everybody. This is how he shows he cares. Why can’t she see that? 

“Hell, Ace, ‘course I do.” 

“And I love you. So I don’t see a problem.” She looks him dead in the eye. He doesn’t want to argue with her. He’s too tired. He wants her to look after him. Damn it. 

“Girls like you-“ He tries, more than a little resigned to his impending failure. 

He’ll never get anything past her, not with that look that she’s wearing, her reporter face. The face she wears when she gets what she wants. He wants her back, of course. Why is he arguing? He can’t quite remember. 

“Don’t wind up with guys like you. Yeah, you’ve said that already. When are you going to realise, Jack Kelly, that I’m not just some girl. I’m your girl. It’s up to me to decide what is best for me, not you. And you are best for me. Now, are you going to listen to me, with an actual plan, or are you going to pretend to be boss again and make us both miserable?” 

Here she goes again, with her plans and her dreams. He might have the city of Santa Fe all wrapped up in his mind, but she’s got the whole world wrapped up in hers. If it’s right, sometimes, when it’s just the two of them, he can see it behind her eyes, the endless possibilities. He could have those, if he reached out and took them. Couldn’t he?

“The first one.” It’s the same kind of resignation as that night up in his penthouse in the middle of the strike. Ostensibly his territory, but not, not really. They’re just dancing the same dances, over and over. He doesn’t want it to end.

“Good choice.” She nods.

And then, because she’s brave, braver than him, she steps up so that she’s almost touching him and looks into his eyes, mouth a little open. He knows exactly what she wants. And damn him, but he’s just a man, not a saint, and she’s stood there like temptation incarnate, the devil, Eve, the apple, all rolled up in one. She’s too good for him, and it’s a sin, but it feels too damn good. He gives in. He kisses her.

It doesn’t stay that way for long though – Katherine isn’t passive in the way that other girls he’s kissed are. It’s not long that he’s kissing her before they’re kissing each other. She doesn’t let him deepen it, seems almost afraid to touch him in passion, letting her fingers only trail lightly across his bruised skin. He knows that she’s trying not to hurt him, but he thinks he could handle a little hurting just about now. She doesn’t though – too good for him – and twines her fingers into his, going up on her toes a little to ease his stooped posture. Jack sends a quick prayer to whoever invented heels, because he’s pretty damn sure that if they hadn’t he’d have bought Katherine a step ladder at this point to save his aching back. 

When they finally break away for air, Katherine is perfectly delighted with quite how ruffled Jack looks. She doesn’t get away with that for long though. 

“What happened to your hand?” Jack asks, his voice and fingers soft as he brings her bandaged hand up to examine it. 

Katherine tries very hard to resist rolling her eyes. Here he is, broken ribs, broken wrist, healing from a serious wound infection and he’s worried about something that is little more than a blemish. Still, she can’t quite bring herself to remove her hand from his, something about his concern for her feeling like a warm blanket being wrapped around her shoulders. 

“I snatched a cigar from my father.” She shrugs. Jack looks up to meet her eyes, raising one eyebrow. “Because he was being horrible.”

“A totally sane response.” He deadpans. 

“Hey, now we match!” She jokes, trying to keep her tone light as she gestures to his back. Jack’s eyes darken. And oh, well, that wasn’t what she should have said. That wasn’t what she should have said at all. 

“I never want you to match me, Katherine.” He says, low and fierce. Katherine almost flinches at the anger in his voice. 

“I was joking.” 

She suddenly feels very small, the way she does when her editor meets the eyes of one of the junior reporters over her head and gives them a story that should have been hers. She’s been growing a thicker skin to that sort of thing, lately, able to hold her ground in a room of ten angry editors after the success of her articles about the strike. It’s only really Jack that can make her feel so small now. It’s a funny thing, that by caring about someone you give them power over you. If she doesn’t care what people think of her, then there’s nothing holding her back. But Jack? She cares about him, about what he thinks of her, for him. And it’s like handing him her heart on a silver platter. 

“Don’t.” Jack mutters, his voice dark, before remembering that he’s supposed to be angry. He does that a lot. She’s hard to stay angry at. “The hell did’cha father do now? If he hurt you, Ace, I swear-”

“I was yelling at him about you.” She cuts him off. 

“For Pete’s sake, Kath.” Jack drags a tired hand over his face, pinching the bridge of his nose and squeezing his eyes closed in pure exasperation. “Why? ‘S no point fightin’ ‘im on this.”

“He nearly got you killed!” She snaps. 

“I’s fine, ain’t I?” 

“No, Jack, you’re not fine, you nearly died!” Katherine snaps again. Can’t he see that she’s trying to help him? Doesn’t he want her to? Jack visibly deflates, the tension collapsing out of his shoulders. He’s exhausted. He can’t do this; he’s too tired. 

“Look, I don’ want to fight wi’ you.” He sounds broken. Katherine wonders if she’s the one who broke him.

She can’t bring herself to stop though. This is a fight and she’s stubborn as all hell. She’s not backing down, even if Jack has retreated inside himself.

“I don’t want to fight with you either, Jack, but in case you’ve forgotten, he _fired_ you.”

“Believe me, sweetheart, I ain’t forgotten.” He lets out a dry, humourless laugh, turning himself away from her and walking back over to the window. 

Jack braces his hands against the sill and drops his head, trying to control his breathing, every intake of breath shifting his painful, aching ribs a little more. Katherine collapses in on herself. She doesn’t know what to do. He’s locked her out again, drawn that curtain around himself to shut her out. Slowly, tentatively, she wanders up and rests her hand gently on his shoulder, trying to avoid thinking about quite how prominent his shoulder-blade feels beneath paper-thin skin. Jack squeezes his eyes closed before he speaks, as if the very words are painful.

“Hey, sweetheart, ‘s fine. I’s handlin’ it. ‘M goin’ down to the docks tomorrow-“

“Jack, you can’t work there-“ She can’t help herself. She sees his face fall as she interrupts him. He’d been trying and she could just kick herself for pushing him away again. 

The dockyards were rough work; rough work for rough men. Katherine thinks of Jack, her Jack, with his clever artist’s fingers, using those hands to haul around cargo amidst the sweat and the smoke. Dockyard workers don’t ever last long. If they escape the explosions in the flour warehouses and the severed limbs from falling cargo, the coal dust from the steamers gets into their lungs as badly as if they were down the mines. Just last week, Katherine had written a piece about three men who died when their supervisor decided to have a smoke leant in the doorway of a flour warehouse. One match and the whole building went up in flames. One match. That’s all it took. 

“‘S an honest livin’.” Jack tells her. It’s as if he’s reading from a script, monotonal. Like he’s prepared it. Like he knew this argument would happen. Like he didn’t have enough energy to win it with wit. She wonders where along the line it happened that the famous Jack Kelly ran out of his own words and started using other people’s.

“You have broken ribs.” It’s a fact. She states it as such.

“Ribs heal.” Jack takes on the same tone, but his answer is lower somehow. 

“It’s dangerous.”

“So’s starvin’.”

Well. She can’t argue with that. She still hasn’t removed her hand from his shoulder. He still hasn’t looked up and met her eyes. She tries very hard not to take it as rejection. This was supposed to be their reconciliation. Where had she gone wrong? Well, Katherine knows that it’s about to go a whole lot more wrong. She opens her mouth, wincing even as she pronounces the words. 

“Just let me help until you get back on your feet-“

Jack’s reaction is immediate. She had known it would be, but it’s almost worth it because he stands at looks at her again, finally. And then it isn’t worth it, it isn’t worth it at all, because he looks so heartbroken that she can hardly stand it. She wants to stroke his hair and tell him that it’s all going to be okay and have him believe her. Katherine wonders if she’s just blown her chance to ever do that. 

“I ain’t takin’ charity, Katherine, you wanna throw your money around then you go to the lodgehouse an’ feed them boys.” His voice is calmer, more even than she expected. Hers, on the other hand. 

“I am not throwing my money around,” she snaps, exasperated, “I am trying to help you.” _Okay, now he’s mad._ She can see it in his face. 

“I don’t need help!” He yells. Katherine flinches. He never yells at her, never raises his voice to a lady. It’s one of the many ways that this street rat is more of gentleman than half of the men at her family functions. Jack sees it, sees the way her face changes, and dips his voice lower, sounding a little sorry, a little tired. “I’s the one who looks after everybody else. I’s fine.”

And then he realises what he’s said, when her face changes again into some kind of pity that he can hardly stand. He straightens his shoulders. Why should he be ashamed? It’s true, isn’t it? He’s always the one who looks after everybody else. That’s his job.

“Jack, honey.” The words are soft. They melt him.

“I know, I know.” He looks down, hand coming up to rub at the back of his neck.

Katherine takes a slow step into his space, reaching up and taking his hand in hers, twining their fingers together, then laying her palm flat on his chest. She can feel his heart beating, a steady thump thump under her fingers. It grounds her. He’s here. He’s alive. He’s okay. They can do this. 

“Listen, I’m not going to push this. But I’m with you, always, right by your side. We get through this together. Okay?”

“Yeah, okay.” Jack nods slowly, his free hand, bandage still wrapped around his wrist, coming up to cover the one of hers that rests over his heart. “I’m sorry for bein’ an idiot.”

“That’s okay. I haven’t been entirely fair either.” Katherine closes her eyes, trying not to worry, trying to relish the opportunity to just be close to him. “Just… please look for something else. Not the docks.”

“Okay.” Jack says. Her eyes flutter open and she looks up at him, surprised. He stares back down at her, open and honest. “If you’s that worried, then, okay. I’ll look for somethin’ else.” 

She leans up, then, and kisses him like she’s forgotten that he got beaten within an inch of his life less than a week ago. It hurts, of course, Jack’s ribs are in agony, but it feels too damn good to care. He stumbles backwards, her hands still entwined with his, until his knees hit the edge of the bed and they topple backwards, her landing on top of him with a whoomph of petticoats.

“Fuck!” Jack loses his self-control, clutching at his abdomen like it’s on fire. Katherine immediately rolls off him, terrified, and Medda bursts in. “I’s fine!” Jack moans, throwing up a hand to wave them both away and pushing himself up into a sitting position, grimacing. “I’s fine. Jus’… ribs.” 

“Okay.” Medda nods, looking between the two of them. Katherine realises how this must look, with her, mussed and looking, she imagines, rather… well-loved, sprawled on his bed, of all things. It doesn’t help that Jack is shirtless. She turns beet red. “Well,” Medda says slowly, “you should probably get back to bed, baby, rest ‘em up. ‘S gettin’ pretty late, Miss Katherine.” When Medda finally looks at her, her eyes are full of meaning. 

Duly chastised, Katherine gathers herself and presses a quick kiss to Jack’s cheek, telling him that she’ll be back tomorrow. Jack grunts out a quick, pained response and she makes a quick exit, edging past Medda to the doorway. She feels ashamed of something, though she’s not quite sure what. But before she can even get out the front door to stew in her shame in peace, Medda calls out to her, pulling Jack’s bedroom door closed behind her. 

“Now,” Medda comes up to stand before her in the hallway, her voice low, “this ain’t none o’ my business, but do I need to have a talk wi’ Jack? Send him to the barbers, you know?” _Well._ That certainly wasn’t what she was expecting Medda to say. 

“Miss Medda, Jack’s hair looks fine to me?” Katherine ventures, confusion written across her face.

“No, baby.” Medda sighs, holding back a laugh. “I mean, do I need to send him there to get… somethin’ for the weekend.”

“Oh!” The realisation dawns, and with it a fresh wave of shame and heat rushing to Katherine’s cheeks. “Oh no, oh my – _no_ , Miss Medda, nothing like that.”

“Hey, baby, there’s no shame in it. I was young once too-“ Medda raises her hands in mock surrender. Katherine quickly cuts in. 

“No, no, really, nothing like that. He just fell over.” Even to her, the excuse sounds lame. 

“Okay, baby, if you say so.” Medda shrugs, clearly disbelieving. “You get home safe now. I’ll see you tomorrow.” 

Once Katherine has closed the door, Medda goes back to Jack’s room and finally takes out the letter that had come for him nearly an hour ago. He’s in bed, where she left him, looking simultaneously exhausted and begrudging. She holds it out.

“What’s this?” Jack asks, taking the letter from between her fingers and shifting his legs across the mattress so that she can sit on the side of the bed.

“Open it and see, honey.”

Jack tears the thick, heavy envelope open with clumsy fingers and extracts a letter typed on creamy, letterheaded paper. 

“Dear Mista Kelly,” Jack frowns, squinting at the paper, “my name is Mista Charles Dow, and I’s the co-owner of The Wall Street Journal. My business partner, Mista Jones, and I has seen your work in The Sun an’, more recently, The World. We is incredibly impressed with your talent an’ would like to organise an interview with you at your earliest convenience to discuss the possibility of you takin’ up a permanent position as an illustrator for our newspaper.” Jack lowers the letter slowly. He hopes Medda can’t see the way the letter is fluttering in his trembling fingers. “You’s havin’ me on, Medda. Tell me you’s havin’ me on.” 

“No, baby.” She smiles. “For once in your life, I think you might just’a caught a break.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'Something for the weekend', in case you didn't know, is what barbers used to ask their male customers after a haircut to see if they wanted to buy a packet of condoms. Yeah, I know, history is weird. Also, hi! I'm new to ao3 (been working with the classic ff.net up until now) which is he reason that 11 chapters went up at once! This story will be being continued at a more reasonable rate from now on. Comments are so encouraging, so please leave one if you feel so inclined :) xx


	13. Chapter 13

It's something that Katherine thinks on, as she walks home. What people think of her and Jack. Whether it is widely assumed that Jack is regularly requiring _something for the weekend_. Whether he should be. Winter is drawing in across New York, even though it's only mid-October and the trees have shed their leaves completely now, a crunchy carpet beneath her shoes. As a child she had loved to run and play in them, laughing and cavorting in them along the pavement outside their house. Then one day father said that she was too old for such thinks. Leaves were for walking on, not playing in. Such behaviour wasn't ladylike.

It's late, when she gets home, well after dinner has been served, thank goodness. Katherine takes the tradesmen's entrance round the back, turning her key in the lock and slipping up the servants' stairs, hoping that she'll manage to make it to her bedroom without being cornered by one member of her family or another. She thinks she's managed it, too, until she passes the doorway to her parents' room just as her father emerges. Katherine feels a little bit like she'd just like to shrivel up and die right at that moment. Her father looks at her. There it is again. Appraising.

"Katherine."

"Father." She looks at where he's standing in the corridor. Can she sneak past him before he says something awful?

"You're late." She shrugs in response and is rewarded with a glare of irritation. He'd always hated it when they didn't 'use their words' as children; they'd always been told off for it. Somehow, he hadn't thought 'using her words' was a compelling argument for her career choice, though. "Your conduct-"

"Is none of your concern. I'm not your perfect daughter, Father." She snaps. Katherine knows she shouldn't, but she's tired, damnit, and stressed.

"No." His lips twist. "You're a slut." He walks past her and down the stairs, leaving her frozen in place, heavy-limbed and mouth open.

The words are still ringing in her ears on Sunday when, once again, they go and sit in their regular pew at church. Sit in their regular places. Kneel at the regular times. It's performative, somehow, in a way that Katherine feels that it shouldn't be. The minister stands in his pulpit and speaks to the evils of fornication. This time, it's her father who looks over at her, but unlike him the week prior, Katherine notices. She feels hot shame bubble in her stomach and wonders whether what she's doing right now is as bad as everyone seems to think it is. After all, she and Jack haven't done anything, not really. Sure, things have got a bit heated, but Jack has been nothing if not a gentleman throughout. As soon as she so much hints at wanting to stop, he pulls away as fast as if he's been burned.

She thinks about it during lunch and then some more as she walks to Elizabeth's. The two of them aren't close, not by any means, though she used to think they were. Until she'd met Jack and the rest of the newsies, this is what she'd thought friendship was, these tea parties and embroidery circles. Now she knows that friendship is more than that. But this isn't a topic that she feels that Race would be particularly helpful with, at least not if she ever wants to show her face amongst the newsies again, and she knows that if she tries to talk to Davey about it then he'll just turn bright red and develop a stammer. So, Elizabeth it is.

The other woman seems pleased to see her, pouring her tea and making polite small talk in the little parlour that adjoins her bedroom in the enormous townhouse owned by her parents. Katherine isn't sure exactly what it is that Eliza's parents do, but it's something to do with the fortune to be made with diamond imports from Africa. The room is a bit too pink for Katherine's tastes, the wallpaper the sickly sort of pink of the sweets that are piled in the jars behind the post office counter for small children with sticky fingers to drool over. On the coffee table, beside the dainty china tea set patterned with forget-me-nots, is a small black-and-white photograph in an intricate silver frame. Mr. Vanderbilt stares out, impassive, in a startlingly white garden party suit. Katherine smiles a little, knowing that if Jack ever put one of those on it would stay white for all of two seconds. The boy is a veritable magnet for dirt.

"How are you and Mr. Vanderbilt?" Katherine asks, accepting the teacup handed to her.

"Very well, thank you." Elizabeth replies, sinking back into a plush velvet sofa, this one in an aggressive shade of fuchsia. Katherine tries not to look directly at it for fear of being blinded. "I believe he may propose soon; he has spoken of marriage within the next year, which makes Father exceptionally happy."

Katherine sips her tea, startled. Rose, of course, had married Dr. Graceton last year, the first in their little group to do so. But Rose was three years older than Katherine and Eliza. The prospect of Elizabeth, only a month younger than her, but still _younger_ , being married is jarring.

"So soon?"

"We've been properly courting for nigh on two months now, Katherine." Elizabeth laughs, a practiced, high society laugh like a tinkling bell. "It hardly takes longer than that to get to know someone's character, if one is asking the right questions. Besides, we will of course have to have a summer wedding, by which time I shall have had my birthday, and nineteen is a perfectly respectable age to get married."

Katherine inclines her head. She supposes it is, really. And if she really thinks about it, maybe it isn't so young at all. She thinks about being able to live with Jack, to step out with him without having people whispering behind their hands. She thinks about being able to wake up next to him every morning and wrap her arms around him while they cook together. She thinks about being able to be alone with him as much as she likes without fear of being interrupted. No, perhaps marriage has some appealing qualities after all.

"Are you excited?" She asks.

"I suppose?" Elizabeth looks taken aback, as if she'd never even considered that excitement was something, she should be feeling in regards to getting married. "I've not given it much thought. I have planned the wedding colours though, we're to have mint green, and you must be a bridesmaid, of course."

Katherine wonders whether there's something wrong with her, whether there's something broken with her womanhood, that she's like this. That she wants a career, that she wants to kiss Jack rather than endures it, that when she thinks about getting married she thinks about sleepy mornings in the kitchen rather than her desired colour scheme. Maybe that was what people meant when they said 'always a bridesmaid, never a bride'. Elizabeth's wedding would be her third time as a bridesmaid. She wonders whether Jack thinks about it – whether he sees her the way her father does. Whether that cheeky boy she met on the street in those heady days before the strike was the real Jack Kelly, a flirt who was interested in skirt-chasing but not seriousness. Is she just a slut? Is Jack hanging around to get under her skirt and then leave her, ruined reputation and no prospects? She pushes the thoughts away. They're stupid and she knows it. Jack is good and loyal and loves her. He always puts her first. She is not going to let her father poison this, too, this good thing that's finally hit her in the form of Jack Kelly.

"It would be an honour."

"And what of yourself?" Eliza asks lightly. "Have you reconsidered your stance on Darcy yet?"

"You say it as if it were an inevitability!" Katherine responds in kind, trying valiantly to suppress an eye roll.

"Isn't it?" Elizabeth shrugs, taking a pointed sip of her tea. "The man is crazy about you."

"I haven't seen him in months, Eliza." Katherine attempts to shut this conversation down. She had sort of come to talk about Jack, but not like this. This wasn't the way that she'd wanted.

"Absence makes the heart grow fonder." Elizabeth sing-songs. Her tone reminds Katherine of Race when he teases Jack, calling up the fire escape things about the two of them sitting in a tree and nonsense about a baby carriage. Although it still makes her blush, it seems more innocent coming from Race. More affectionate.

"Eliza, you know that I'm with Jack."

Immediately, Elizabeth's nose wrinkles in disdain. She tries to hide it behind her teacup, but Katherine sees it written across her face like words in an open book. Why couldn't these people see in him what she did?

"Ah, yes," the words border on a sneer, "your bit of rough."

"Eliza!" Katherine almost drops her cup.

"Oh come on, Katherine, I'm only teasing." Elizabeth rolls her eyes. "We both know you're only with him to spite your father. Why else would you be carrying on the way you are?" Katherine frowns, recovering herself.

"What do you mean, carrying on?"

"Well, pretending to be so loose. The rumours must be infuriating him." Elizabeth looks positively gleeful.

Katherine wonders, for the first time, if this is actually what her friend wants. If her vicarious delight in Katherine's illicit affair isn't a manifestation of her own desires. Well, it hadn't quite been the way that she'd wanted to get to the topic, but Katherine isn't going to complain. This could, though, she knows, be rather painful. Steeling herself, she asks:

"What rumours?"

"You don't know?" Perfectly plucked eyebrows heighten on the other woman's forehead.

"What rumours, Eliza?" No nonsense.

Elizabeth's glee drops away and she suddenly becomes exceptionally interested in the dregs of tea at the bottom of her cup.

"It's not my place to say."

" _Eliza_." Katherine warns, putting her cup and saucer down a little harder than strictly necessary, making the china rattle.

Elizabeth shifts uncomfortably on the sofa and leans forward to pour herself another cup of tea in the slowest manner humanly possible. Katherine can feel the coil in her stomach winding and winding, ready to snap – she's about to, when:

"The rumour that you're…" Elizabeth lowers her voice to a whisper, looking around the room, "sleeping with him. That you've been seen going into his apartment building alone."

"Oh, for pity's sake." Katherine slumps backwards and throws an arm over her eyes. Honestly, trust Elizabeth to make it quite so dramatic. The rumour though…

"It's not true!" Elizabeth gasps at her friend's response, quite clearly convinced it is true. "Katherine -"

"Of course it isn't true!" Katherine snaps. Stops. Adds, slight sheepishly: "Well, the sleeping with him bit."

Elizabeth eyes bulge out of their sockets in a manner rather reminiscent of a bullfrog and she nearly chokes on her tea. For the millionth time that day, Katherine once again resists the urge to roll her eyes.

"You have been… alone with him, though?"

"Yes."

"Katherine… your reputation."

"I know." _Like I need reminding._ Elizabeth presses her lips together, disapproving, but Katherine takes no notice, engrossed in her own thoughts. "Does everybody think we're sleeping together?"

"Most people think you're pretending to in order to rebel against your father." Elizabeth shrugs.

 _Right._ Katherine can't deny that her father's irritation is satisfying, because it really is. She loves to see the fury on his face when she mentions Jack at the dinner table, just daring him to make some comment. But then again, stunts like that are what nearly got Jack killed the other week and she has learned her lesson. She'll be keeping things on the down low from now on. But it makes her sad that others would think so little of her, that they would imagine that she'd step out with a man whom she didn't love just to spite her father. She makes a mental note to tell Jack how wonderful he is when she next sees him – he'll probably turn up to walk her home after work one night this week; he'd promised he would. Other people might doubt her, but she won't be leaving him in any doubt of why she's with him.

"Katherine… if this is true… perhaps you should reconsider Darcy sooner than we thought." It takes Katherine a moment to realise Elizabeth is speaking again, but when she finally processes her friend's words, they smart something awful.

"I'm not leaving Jack." She speaks the words with finality. Elizabeth crinkles her nose in displeasure.

"You can't be – Katherine, you've always been impulsive, but please. Think of the long-term consequences here."

_Long term consequences. Right._

…

When Jack comes out of the interview in the offices of The Wall Street Journal, he strides around the corner into an alley and lets out a breath he's been holding since he walked in over an hour ago. How the hell he'd just done that, he will never know. He leans against the wall, tipping his head back and closing his eyes. It's only when he realises that it's probably not the best idea to lean against the damp, mossy, brick wall because this is his good suit, the one that Katherine got him in the soft, charcoal grey, and it really wouldn't do to ruin it on its first outing, and he stands up properly, that it hits him. This time last Tuesday, he'd been in bed recovering from a life-threatening infection, worrying about how he was going to make rent for him and Crutchie. And now, well, now he's just been promised more money than he's ever heard of in his life. And he knows that he's whipped, because the only thing he wants to do is tell Katherine.

It's quite a way to the offices of the Sun, especially when you're running with ribs that are still sore as hell, but somehow Jack can't quite bring himself to care. The late afternoon sunlight streaks across the city pavements as he pulls in great gulps of chill autumnal air. Jack passes Buttons hawking papes on a street corner and tips him off to get the guys round to Jacobi's – they've got some celebrating to do. He's not been on a high like this since the strike and after all he's been through in the past few months, he damn well deserves it. He makes it to her office five minutes before she usually leaves, at least according to the clock set in the tower of the church a little further down the street, so he has time, at least, to nearly cough up a lung whilst leaning against the building opposite. So maybe he's not quite back to full health yet. Who cares? He's fucking rich.

When Katherine steps out of the office, blinking in the sunshine after hours staring at black ink on white paper, her tired eyes don't spot him at first. She's half-preoccupied with speaking Mr. Ross, one of her many pain-in-the-ass editors, as he pesters her for the third time this week to allow him to walk her home. She's tired, she's fed up of stupid newsroom staff, and she just wants some peace; but, apparently, that's too much to ask. Amidst all this, she hardly even sees Jack coming.

But Jack is coming, and come he does, with a flare of jealousy and protectiveness in gut that even the day's good fortune can't quite douse. Mr. Ross' hand on her arm is sharply withdrawn and she hears quick, defined footsteps behind her, and then she's whirling round, caught up in Jack with his bright eyes and dark curls and dazzling grin. He kisses her like he's a man dying of thirst and she's an oasis. It's deep and passionate and completely inappropriate and Katherine can't bring herself to care about it, propriety be damned, and she catches the lapels of his jacket between her fingers and tugs him closer.

When they finally break away, Jack turns, _far more coolly that he has any right to after a kiss like that_ , Katherine thinks, and offers his hand to Mr. Ross.

"You must be Mista Ross, sir. Pleased to meet'cha. Sorry, just couldn't wait to see my girl." Mr. Ross, as if on autopilot, takes Jack's hand in his pudgy one. His fingers are like cold sausages, clad in rings which the flesh bulges out above and below. He opens and closes his mouth a few times in a manner not dissimilar to a goldfish, before finally managing:

"Mr….?" The word comes out an octave higher than it probably should. Jack smirks.

"Kelly. Jack Kelly."

Katherine just looks up at Jack, unable to form any words. He still hasn't let go of her, just pulled her round and tucked her into his side, his arm around her waist and his thumb brushing the waistband of her skirt where her shirt is tucked in. In the sunlight, he almost has a halo, the loose curls at the edges of his outline stained orange in the setting sun. It's ridiculous, that Jack Kelly would be the one with a halo, when he's sporting that wicked grin. Especially in that suit – don't get her started on the suit. It's the first time she's seen him in it and there's a sense of smug pride knowing that he's wearing something that she picked out for him. He looks damn good in it too, now that Medda has spent the past few days feeding him up and giving him back a little of the weight he lost to the infection. Beneath the jacket, there's a hint of broad shoulders and she can feel the strength of him, warm and radiating across her from the arm around her waist. Katherine thinks she could ruin herself over him. She thinks she might have already.

"Ah." The man is struck a little dumb. His eyes flick between the couple, once, twice. "Well, Mr. Kelly, I really must be going." Mr. Ross straightens his shoulders and touches his hand to the brim of his bowler hat. "Miss Plumber." He bids her goodbye.

Katherine lets him get half a block away before she brings her hand up to smack at Jack's chest, speaking his name in chastisement. The sentiment is somewhat diluted by the fact that she's definitely snuggling into his side and doesn't remove the hand from his chest.

"What?" Jack asks, looking down at her with faux innocence, eyes sparkling. She rolls her eyes.

"Bit much, don't you think?"

"Jus' don't want 'im gettin' any ideas." Jack shrugs, grinning. He'd be lying if he said that another man laying a hand on Katherine (especially with what she'd told him about Mr. Ross – he recalls one particular occasion where she spoke the words 'sleazy' and 'buffoon' in the same sentence) didn't make him feel like he'd been lit on fire, but he can handle it. Today is going well, he's not going to ruin it. He squeezes her waist, tugging her a little closer. How was she supposed to stay annoyed at him? "C'mon Ace, don't be mad at me. I's got great news!"

"Oh yeah?" She pulls away a little, to look up at him, but doesn't remove her hand from where it's resting over his heart.

"Yeah." His grin grows impossibly wider. Jack turns to face her, taking both of her hands in his. "You is lookin' at the next executive illustrator for The Wall Street Journal."

There's so much glee in his in his expression. It's infectious, but Katherine doesn't need any help to reach his giddy heights.

"No!" She squeals, squeezing his hands and then throwing her arms around his neck, pulling him into a fierce hug.

"Betta' believe it!" Jack crows, wrapping his arms around her, his voice loud in her ear.

She squeezes him tight, then steps back carefully, not quite far enough to disentangle herself from his embrace. Placing her hands on his shoulders, she looks up at him in something like awe.

"Jack, that's fantastic! Congratulations! What? How?"

"They sent me a letter invitin' me for interview, sayin' they likes my work. Found my address in some book now I's got an apartment. Wanted to steal me from The World and were very 'appy that they didn't hafta deal wi' your father."

Neither of them can stop smiling. They look like idiots, Katherine knows, grinning like clowns at one another in the middle of the pavement. She doesn't stop.

"When do you start?"

"Next month – first o' November."

"Oh, Jack," her hand comes up to cup his face, her tiredness whisked away by the force of his enthusiasm, "I'm so proud of you."

"You ain't even heard the best part!" Jack grins, his eyes alight as he jabbers on. "They's promised me twenty-three dollars a week, Ace. I's rich! I's gonna be able to help out the boys an' take you on proper dates! Ain't that jus' the best thing you's ever heard?"

"You're fantastic." She says, and she means it.

There are other thoughts of course. Thoughts of how little he must have been making before for twenty-three dollars a week, which, whilst more than a regular labourer, was pretty standard for an office employee with Jack's skill, to make him feel rich. Thoughts of how that's less than her monthly allowance, never mind her wage. But it's a living wage – and, Katherine thinks, before she can stop herself, more than enough for the two of them to live on comfortably if they were to get married.

"The boys an' I, we's goin' to Jacobi's tonight to celebrate." Jack says, cutting in on her reverie. "You wanna come?"

"I don't know." She replies, before she can think it through.

It's like someone has poured an ice-cold bucket of water over Jack. His face falls and he pulls away a little, her hand dropping from his face.

"Has I done somethin'?" He frowns. "Was it that Mista Ross?"

"No, no, nothing like that." She assures him.

"Then what?"

What, indeed? How was she going to put this? Katherine avoids his gaze, trying to choose the perfect words. Somehow, words always seemed to escape her whenever she was talking to Jack. Sit her in front of a typewriter and she could churn out pages and pages of perfect prose, but stand her in front of her boyfriend and, all of a sudden, she was dumb as a brick.

"Do you think we ought to have chaperone?" She asks quietly.

"So you's gonna hafta define that word for me." Jack remarks. There's a lightness in his tone, but Katherine knows he finds it difficult when he has to ask her such things. It reminds him of how different they are. She can see it in the little twitch at the corner of his mouth.

"Someone who sort of… goes along with us." She ventures, still not meeting his eyes. "Makes sure nothing… compromising happens." Katherine manages to look up at him then and immediately regrets it. He looks positively stricken.

"Katherine, I know it got a little much when Medda walked in th'other day, but I swear, I ain't pushin' for nothin'-" Jack gabbles out before she manages to cut him off.

"No, I know that! I trust you completely. It's just – there are… rumours."

"Rumours?"

"About us, well, me. That I'm, you know." Jack raises an eyebrow. She clarifies. "Sleeping with you."

"Oh." Jack looks wary, but she can't quite read him.

He's like this sometimes, and it makes him feel so far out of her reach. Katherine's getting used to it, or trying to, knowing that this ability probably kept him alive growing up the way he did. She had overhead a comment a tactless Race had made to a small, crying newsie a few weeks ago. _Snyder jus' beat us harder when we cried_ , he'd said, _count your blessin's_. So, Katherine can deal with Jack holding back a little emotion. She waits.

"If you would feel more comfortable wi' a chaperone or whatever, then I's happy to go along with that. Whatever makes you happy." Jack says slowly, all solemn-like. "But, it don't matter what we has, Katherine, people are gonna talk about us. The world ain't gonna stop thinkin' we're crazy jus' 'cos some other person vouches that I ain't got my hand up your skirt." She winces at his less than delicate phrasing, but nods.

"Okay."

"Okay?" Jack questions. She smiles a little.

"Let them think we're crazy. I want to be alone with you–" her eyes widen, "-wait, not like that," she blushes, then sees a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth and rolls her eyes at him, "oh, you know what I mean."

"Sure I do, Ace." He smiles. Not his big, devil-may-care grin, but a small one, gentle. Just for her. "An' I jus' wants to say, as well. I know, I's said it before, an' I swear I ain't sayin' it to get a leg over or nothin', but, well, I am gonna ask you to marry me. It ain't gonna be today, an' it ain't gonna be tomorrow, but I will. I wants to make sure that I can give you everythin' you deserve, 'fore I ask. But I will ask."

She's surprised by the seriousness in his eyes and the nervousness there, the way he can't quite keep himself from fidgeting as he speaks, one hand rubbing at the back of his neck. Well, that certainly answers her question. Her high society friends will, she knows, tell her that she's naïve, taken in by a street urchin's pretty promises. But it's Jack, her Jack, and god help her if she doesn't trust him with her life.

"I know." She says, as sweet as if there were sugar on her lips, leaning up to brush a kiss against his perfect mouth. "I love you."

"I love you too." He smiles down at her. "C'mon, we's got a reservation at Jacobi's. You never know, I might even buy you a seltzer. I's goin' up in the world, after all."

Jack grins, pulling her close once again with an arm around her waist, and bumps her hip with his own. _Cheeky boy._ She smiles up at him, bumping him back. He staggers a little, mocking her, the grin stuck on his face like glue.

"Jack Kelly, you sure know how to treat a girl."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all of your lovely comments! They absolutely make my day and I love to hear about your impressions of my interpretation of Jack and Kath. Honestly, I'm in love with these two - hence why the next chapter will be a complete fluff-fest with only a smattering of angst. I'm trying to keep content for this story coming as quickly as possible as updates will slow down once I go back to university because my degree is unforgiving. (I did, however, have an idea for a Jatherine college AU fic whilst trying to get to sleep last night, so who knows, I might write that at some point, because who needs first-class degree when you can spend that time writing fanfiction about these two goofs?)


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter, have fun playing the game of 'spot the Peaky Blinders reference'. Also, I am a walking cliche, don't judge me. ALSO, there's a trigger warning for abuse – it's pretty light and vague and if you skip the paragraph that begins with '"Yeah." He chuckles.' then you should be fine – because I can't seem to stop torturing Jack. Comments make me very happy xx

Jacobi's is like she's never seen it before. Admittedly, she's only been in twice before, but the dejected newsboys she'd encountered the last time she'd walked in, clutching her front-page article, are nothing like the ones there now. The place is buzzing, about fifteen of the newsies tucked into three of the worn booths in the back of the place, elbows and sarcastic remarks flying as they all jostle for their place at the tables. The newsies erupt into cheers when Jack walks in, running up and slapping him on the back. Still, he doesn't loosen his arm around her waist – if anything, he pulls her closer – and she's grateful for its grounding pressure amidst the clamour.

"Well, well, look at you, mister fancy illustrator!" Race crows, jumping up to snatch the newsboy cap from Jack's head and pulling it onto his own, gesturing to Jack's suit with his free hand. "What's this eh, it part o' the job to dress like a toff?"

"Jus' 'cos you can't pull off a suit, Racer." Jack grins, snatching his cap back and ruffling the other boy's hair. Around them, the newsies hoot and howl like so many wild animals, bantering back and forth.

By the time they reach the table, Crutchie has managed to climb on top of it. He's looking around expectantly, but the newsies are, predictably, bouncing off the walls too much to even register his presence.

"Hey, quieten down!" Davey calls out over the noise. "Crutchie wants to tell us somethin'." Crutchie smiles gratefully down at Davey and raises his glass.

"I propose a toast-"

"Toast? Where? Who's makin' toast?" Albert perks up, peering around.

"Shut it! Not that kinda toast, you idiot!" Race hisses, digging his elbow into the other boy's side.

"Oh, I's the idiot? Huh, says you, mister _the woild is yer erster_!"

"That was one time!"

"Crutchie's tryna speak!" Finch shouts, cutting over the two bickering newsies. Crutchie waits until they have dissolved into quiet – well, at least as close to it as the newsies ever get – before he continues.

"I propose a toast," he grins, looking down at Jack, "to Jack Kelly. The best big brother any newsie could ask fo'. To Jack!" He lifts his glass.

"To Jack!"

Jack waves them off, of course, telling them to shut up good naturedly and lifting Crutchie down from the table real gentle despite the way it jostles his ribs. Katherine thinks, though, that she can just about see a pink tinge in his cheeks when he walks past the lamp mounted on the wall.

The newsies settle back into roughhousing and bantering like the toast never happened, so Jack squashes them all up in a booth and pulls Katherine onto the seat beside him. It's cramped, there's far too many of them all squashed up together, but they're only here on Mr. Jacobi's good favour and they can't take up tables he needs for paying customers, the men who are settling in for a drink and a hot meal after a long day's work. Katherine blushes when Race makes a comment about how she's practically sat in Jack's lap, but her boyfriend, the smug idiot, just grins and tugs her properly into his lap, sticking his tongue out at Race. It takes her a moment to process that she's sitting in a man's lap in a public bar (why had she been confused about those rumours again?) but when she does her cheeks burn even brighter. Her father would be mortified if he could see her now.

Jack wonders, for a second, when he sees her flushed cheeks, if he's overstepped a boundary, but he knows Katherine well enough to know that if he had then she wouldn't have had a second thought about slapping him across the face. If she just happens to be blushing, then that just makes her all the more adorable. He quite fancies kissing the blush right off her face – or making it worse, either will do, he's not picky – but he isn't quite that brazen. His boys already know he's whipped, it wouldn't do to give them any more fuel for that particular fire.

In the opposite corner of Jacobi's, a ragtag band of musicians strikes up a lively tune, all fiddles and banjos. Within seconds, the customers are pushing tables and chairs out of the way to clear a space for a whirling, chaotic dance, all stamping feet and outstretched arms.

Once the commotion is over, the dance still in full swing but the path to the bar clear, at least, Davey insists on buying them both a celebratory drink, despite Jack's many, many protestations.

"It's fine." The boy insists. "Dad's back at work now anyway, so any money Les and I make selling papes on the weekends is ours. I can afford to buy you a drink, Jack." He turns to Katherine, ever the gentleman. "Katherine, what would you like?"

"Lemonade, please, if they have it." She smiles. Davey sets off toward the bar, squeezing in between tables and customers lounging, languorous, in their chairs.

"Lemonade, Ace?" Jack pinches her side, gently, teasing. "Very… adventurous."

"Ladies don't set foot in public houses, Mr. Kelly, never mind consume alcohol in them." She says, exaggerating her pronunciation (her correct pronunciation, as she tells him all the damn time) in the way she did when she was seven and her governess had her learn and recite a new poem every week. She still can't look at a volume of William Blake without feeling queasy.

"God forbid!" Jack snorts, casting a glance over his shoulder at the dancers, then returning his teasing gaze to her. "Tell me, _Lady Katherine_ , are ladies also not allowed to dance?"

"They're allowed." She suppresses a smile, tilting her head to the side, coquettish. "If they're asked properly."

Jack grins, opening his mouth to shoot back a response, but before he can say anything else, Davey is back clutching three drinks, two lemonades and a whiskey for Jack. They thank him as he doles out the drinks.

"How you can drink that stuff is beyond me." Davey shakes his head, handing Jack the tumbler of amber liquid.

"Oh, I hate the stuff," Jack grimaces, taking a gulp of it, "'s what my old man used to drink when he got real nasty, but I heard it's s'posed to be a real good painkiller." Katherine's heart stops.

"You're in pain?" She asks, before she can stop herself.

She doesn't want to think about anything in that sentence. Doesn't want to think about what Jack just implied about his father and doesn't want to think about Jack in pain. But damnit if he doesn't just take that choice away from her, if he didn't just take away all her choice in the matter the second the cocky sod waltzed into her life with a _good mornin' Miss_.

"Jus' my ribs, Ace; think I strained 'em a bit liftin' Crutchie down an' I don't wanna miss out on dancin' wi' you jus' 'cos I ruined 'em too early in the night." Jack smiles at her, soft and warm, but it doesn't reach his eyes. No, his eyes are begging her. Not here. Not now. "Ain't nothin' to worry about."

"Jack-" She starts to protest, Jack's pleading be damned, but he interrupts her.

"I's fine." He says, tightening the arm wrapped around her waist a little in an attempt at comfort. And then his gaze flies over her shoulder. "Hey, Mush, stop prattin' about an' give Elmer 'is cap back, 'fore I soak you!" Jack shifts her off his lap, ever-so-gently, and stands up to go and break the two boys apart.

The newsies suck away his attention then – they're having about ten different conversations and Jack appears to somehow be a part of all of them, breaking up fights and making snarky comments and telling stories. He's in his element here, among his boys, laughing and cracking jokes and rubbing his knuckles along their heads, landing playful punches left and right. Katherine thinks that she could watch him for a year and not get bored. Davey clears his throat and she turns to look at him, snapped out of her reverie, and sees the smile tugging at the corners of his lips. _Whoops._

"How are you enjoying being back at school?" Katherine manages, forcing herself to focus Davey. He looks a little surprised that anyone is actually paying attention to him amidst the chaos, but replies.

"Pretty well, thanks. Just in time, really, I have to sit my college entrance exam in January."

"Oh?" She leans forward, propping her elbows on the table in a delicious breach of manners. "Where are you going?"

"New York University School of Law." Davey chances a small, hopeful smile. "Or hoping to, at least. They have some pretty good scholarships so I shouldn't be costin' my parents money to go there."

"That's an excellent school! You must be excited."

"I'll be excited once I get in." Davey snorts, taking another sip of his lemonade.

"Like there's any question o' that." Katherine looks up to see Jack, who, it appears, has managed to escape the band of newsies, probably due to many of them having left the tables to head over to where several people, including, now, some of the barmaids, are dancing a raucous jig.

He's ditched his suit jacket somewhere and rolled up his shirtsleeves. There's something about him, half undone like this, warm and pliable from the whiskey, that is completely intoxicating.

"Lady Katherine, would you care to dance with me?" He grins. She thinks about protesting, thinks about how much his ribs must be hurting him, but there's a challenge in his eyes that she can't pass up.

"I would be honoured." She puts her dainty hand in his large one and he leads her over to the dance floor.

It's a bit intimidating. Her mother had, of course, instructed Katherine's governess to train her in all the key styles of social dance. In fact, Katherine's ballroom dancing is something she has received a good number of compliments on. This, however, does not seem the sort of dance where her impeccable technique will be of much use to her.

None of the dancers, be they barmaids, newsies, or customers, seem to have any sort of idea what either they, or the other dancers around them are doing at all. All of them are charging around the wooden floor with bouncing, skipping steps, twisting in and out of one of another, leaning out to spin one another around before pulling back in to turn together, bodies pressed together scandalously close.

Jack, however, seems unconcerned, taking hold of her waist and plunging them into the melee. It takes her a few moments to get her bearings, and even then it's a while before she manages to stop treading on Jack's toes. He doesn't seem to mind, though, throwing his head back in laughter. Jack catches hold of her hands, spinning them in endless circles before pulling them back close together all in a rush, her chest pressed flush against his as he twists them out of the way of the other couples. It's strange, but she quite enjoys it, the push and pull of it, the way that it's rough but Jack leads her through it unbelievably gently. And once she gets the hang of it, she can enjoy the shouting and clapping and stamping of feet, even Race's wolf whistle when Jack pulls her in particularly close, fitting one of his legs between hers as he sweeps them out of the path of a drunkard stumbling past. There's pleasure in it, exhilaration, and she lives for the pride she sees gleaming in Jack's eyes as she hitches her skirts up in one hand to match his steps.

It's several hours later when they stumble out of Jacobi's, laughing and flushed and breathless. The newsies head back to the lodgehouse in a cloud of noise, whilst Jack insists on walking her home, one arm slung loosely across her shoulders.

The night is cold, mid-October bringing with it a frigid breeze that wafts off the Hudson and through the streets, cutting through alleyways and side streets, rustling the linens left out to dry on the washing lines strung between windows in the slums. It's not so bad once they start walking toward Katherine's house – she lives in the nice part of the city, after all, but it's still cold and Jack can feel her shivering. It's almost automatic, the way he drops his arm from around her shoulders and shrugs off his jacket only to drape it around her.

"Jack, you'll get cold." She says, trying to hand it back. His hand on her shoulder stills her.

"I's done more than one New York winter in jus' a shirt, Ace. I's sure I'll manage one more night." He smiles, but it's a little sad, and he looks down, shoving his hands deep into his trouser pockets.

Resigned, Katherine tugs his jacket a little tighter around her shoulders. Already it smells like him, like ink and whiskey. She looks up at the moon that casts her shadow, long and sharp and cutting, across the pavement.

"I hate that." She mumbles.

"Hm?" Jack looks up at her, eyes bright in the darkness.

"The thought of you, out without a coat in the winter."

"Wasn't much fun livin' it, I'll admit." Jack shrugs.

The whiskey has softened him slightly, made him muted and mellow in the yellow glow of the streetlights that they pass. The wind whips at him, mussing his already messy curls and tugging at the fabric of his shirt where it isn't covered by his waistcoat. She falls in love with him a little more. But she has to ask. She has to. Even if it breaks them both.

"When you were ill, you talked about the Refuge." She says, tentative. Jack stiffens, but doesn't respond, so she presses on. "You said it was cold. You said you had blue fingers."

Jack doesn't respond for a few moments, both of them continuing to walk in slow, scuffing steps. Katherine is starting to wonder whether she's messed up when he finally speaks, his voice warm and heavy-accented and lighter in tone than she had expected.

"Sounds like I's a mouthy bastard when I's ill."

"You think you aren't normally?" She grins, bumping him with her hip so he's forced to step off the pavement and into the road to keep his balance.

"Hey!" His eyes fly up to her face, grinning, as he gently pushes her back and steps back up onto the curb to walk beside her.

"True, though, isn't it?" She laughs.

"Yeah." He chuckles. There's a pause and then he starts to speak. "'S the reason I got blue fingers. Me runnin' my mouth, I mean." Katherine looks up, surprised, but Jack isn't looking at her, he's looking straight ahead, his eyes not quite focused on something far distant. He's hunched a little too, shoulders forward and fingers churning in his pockets. He continues, his tone flat. "I'd made Snyder angry, real angry, angrier than usual. Worse than the beatin's, though those ain't no picnic. He 'ad this room, called it the boathouse. It was this flooded cellar, black as pitch, full o' this stinkin', freezin' cold water right up to your neck. Even the rats wouldn't live down there. He chucked me in, it was winter, water was cold. When I come out, my fingers was blue. Couldn't move 'em. I think the only reason they didn't drop off was I kept stickin' 'em in my mouth to keep 'em warm. Never really liked cold since."

Katherine doesn't know quite what to say. What is there that she can say? She remembers his words that night, that first night of them, up in his penthouse. _What? A little different from how you were raised?_ Should she say sorry? She wants to. But sorry won't do Jack any good; so she reaches out and slides her hand into his pocket, finding his hand inside and pulling it out to twine their fingers together. Jack looks down at their joined hands and then up at her, something unreadable in his eyes.

"Thank you. For telling me." She says, barely a whisper.

Jack stops and looks at her, then takes a step backward into the middle of the empty street and spreads his arms wide.

"Dance with me." A laugh bursts from her throat at his words, but is cut short when she realises he's serious. Jack just stands there, arms outstretched, ready to receive her if she just steps forward.

"I've been dancing with you all evening." She manages.

"So?" Jack shrugs.

"Here?" Katherine asks, looking both ways for unseen traffic before wandering out into the street to join him.

"Why not?" He asks, quiet, wrapping one arm around her waist and taking her other hand in his to pull her into a loose sort of dance hold, closer and more intimate than any way he'd held her in Jacobi's.

It's ridiculous and Katherine knows it, as he starts to guide her, turning them in a slow circle as he stares into her eyes. This is nothing like the perfect frame that has to be maintained throughout a waltz or any other ballroom dance. They're not even dancing, for goodness sake, not really, just sort of swaying and turning, slowly shifting their weight from one foot to another.

"There's no music." She whispers, unable to hold up under the intensity of his gaze any longer, dropping her head to rest against his chest.

He presses a kiss to her temple and starts to hum, quietly at first and then a little louder, but still only enough that she can just hear it, pressed up against him as she is, letting him hold her. They're in the middle of the street, but Katherine can't bring herself to care.

Her mother had once quoted Oscar Wilde and described dancing, at least the type of dancing that they're doing now, not the ballroom dancing that is fit for a lady, as a vertical expression of a horizontal urge. At first, she'd thought her mother had meant the kind of raucous, chaotic, passionate dancing that she and Jack had engaged in earlier that night, but somehow she's starting to believe that her mother had meant something rather more like this. Quiet, loving, Jack humming tunelessly in her ear. She thinks that she could dance like this, with him, for the rest of her life and not be discontent.

At some point they break away from one another, not in anger, but in mutual acknowledgement that they are out of time once again. Jack holds her close to his side the whole way back to her house and it's only when she turns to hand back his jacket that they speak.

"I'd like to do that again." Katherine says, suddenly feeling very shy. "I had a great time with you and the boys."

"Yeah?" A small smile tugs at the corners of his mouth. "Well, sure, Ace. We ain't got much celebratin' to do right now, but – hey, my first day at this new job. We'll go out that evenin', the whole lotta us. How's that?"

"That sounds wonderful." She smiles, going up on her tiptoes to brush her lips across his cheek, and she means it.

That particular celebration never happens.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got a bit panicked today as I realised that this story probably isn’t the best planned out and I’m kind of letting the characters just do their thing. Please, if you get bored with certain storylines or if there’s too much dialogue (because I always write the dialogue of a chapter first) then please tell me! Comments, especially constructive criticism but also just hearing your thoughts on events, make my days lovely xx

On Jack’s first day at the office, everything goes better than expected. He starts fresh with new colleagues, and while they all seem surprised by his broad accent and rough manners, his charm and ready laughter go a long way towards endearing him to the other illustrators working in his office. 

His office – and boy does that feel weird to say out loud - is a large, high-ceilinged room which houses six large sloping desks. Four of them are for him and his colleagues, the regular illustrators, to get done as much as they can during the week, nine-to-five, whilst the other two are for the weekend lads, young illustrators hustling alongside art school, to make up any extra content. When Jack finds out that he’s only working eight hours a day and no weekends, he damn near falls over. 

He leaves the office at five that night feeling better than he ever has and heads back to his apartment to ditch his work stuff before heading to Jacobi’s. And that’s when the plan starts to derail. 

Jack jimmies the lock open, cursing the sticky key, only to hear an unmistakable barking noise coming from his living room. He dodges in there, panic rising in his chest. _Not Crutchie. Not Crutchie. For pity’s sake don’t let it be Crutchie._ Race is stood there, with Albert on one side and Elmer on the other, holding a barely conscious Carl. They look terrified. Jack feels guilty for breathing a sigh of relief. It’s okay though, because the feeling doesn’t last long, leaving him breathless with worry for the kid. 

“Croup?” The three younger boys nod in confirmation. Jack curses, running a hand over his face. “Right, Elmer, head round the neighbours, knock on doors, get as many kettles as you can find an’ bring ‘em here. Albert, go stoke the stove. I need that kettle boilin’, y’hear me?” 

Albert and Elmer scatter and Jack walks over to Race, scooping Carl into his own arms. Carl coughs weakly, halfway between a wheeze and the braying of a donkey, and opens his eyes to look up at Jack.

“Hey kid,” Jack shoots the boy a weak, wobbly smile as he kicks open the door to his bedroom and plops him down on the bed, “I know this ain’t much fun, but we’s gon’ get you all better, okay?” Carl nods, unable to speak. Jack turns to look over his shoulder at Race, who is frozen in the doorway. “Any other kids got it?”

“Not that I could see.” Race shakes his head, looking like a deer in the headlights.

“Good. Any sign, you bring ‘em straight ‘ere, got it? It’ll spread through that place like wildfire ‘f we let it get out.” Jack tucks the covers up over Carl and stands. “Right, Race, you listen to me. We’s fine, we’s old ‘nough, but y’know Crutchie gets all sorts o’ ills somethin’ shockin’. Somethin’ like this might hit him real hard. He’s sellin’ on the corner by Newsie Square today. I needs you to go an’ tell ‘im to ask to stay wi’ Medda ‘til Carl’s better. ‘Kay?”

“I think it’s my fault.” Race blurts out, as if he hasn’t heard a word that Jack’s just said to him.

“Don’t be stupid.” Jack responds, furrowing his brow, only for Race to shake his head wildly. 

“No, I-“ the boy squeezes his eyes closed, “he told me he was coughin’ real bad an’ I told ‘im to suck it up, that a cough weren’t nothin’ to cry over. You’d have seen it, Jack if you’d ha’ been there.”

“Nah, kid.” Jack shakes his head softly and walks over to clap a hand on Race’s shoulder. “‘S just one o’ them things.”

“But what if-“ 

“Don’t.” Jack says, firm, in way that forces Race to meet his eyes. “Jus’, go an’ tell Crutchie, yeah?”

“On it, boss.” Race nods jerkily and practically sprints out of the room, only to be replaced by Albert, who staggers in with a steaming kettle. 

“Thanks, Albert.” Jack takes the kettle and sets it down on the stone windowsill. “Can you go an’ get a fire goin’ in the other bedroom?” 

Albert leaves again, leaving Jack to look down at Carl, whose barking cough is rattling in his chest. Jack heads through to the kitchen and grabs a big bowl. _It’s fine,_ he tells himself, _you’s done this before, Kelly, and you’s done it with a damn sight less help than this._

He remembers the winter in the Refuge that they all got it. He’d been just on the right side of too old for it, so it had rattled his chest but left him relatively unscathed. Five boys had died, that year, out of the twenty of them in his dorm. After the first two went, they’d sent round a lady who’d given them all something to make them throw up and then filled the room with kettles. She’d told Jack to keep the kettles filled and he had. It had saved fifteen of them, but that doesn’t make a difference. It hadn’t saved the other three, and those are the faces that haunt Jack on his worst days. Mikey. Sal. Jacob. 

_It’s just a kettle and a bit of vomit, Kelly. That ain’t so hard, is it?_ Except Jack doesn’t happen to have some magic potion to make a kid throw up, so he’s just going to have to do it the old-fashioned way. He heads back into the bedroom and sets the bowl in Carl’s lap, pulling the kid up the pillows and into a sitting position as gently as he possibly can. 

“M’kay, kid, this is gonna be really shit, y’hear me, but you’s gotta be brave for me, alright?” Carl nods, slightly delirious. Jack knows, right then, that there is no way he’s going to get this kid to make himself sick. _Fuck._ “Carl, listen to me, bud, you’s needin’ to be sick, get this gunge outta your throat, okay?”

“Don’t-“ _cough_ “-wanna.” Cough. 

“I know, but ‘s the only way it’s gonna get better.” Carl shakes his head, gasping for breath. Jack can’t wait any longer. “Sorry, kid.” 

With a grimace, Jack pries the kid’s jaw open and shoves two of his fingers down his throat. Most of it goes in the bowl. Some of it goes on Jack. _Well, ain’t that just swell._ But Carl is breathing easier when he sags back onto the pillows and by the time Albert has the fire going in Crutchie’s room and Elmer has set a frankly obscene amount of kettles on the grille above the fire to pump steam into the room, the kid is breathing easier still and is halfway asleep. 

Isn’t it just Jack’s luck that he’s barely got rid of Albert and Elmer, telling them to go back to the lodgehouse and get an early night, and definitely hasn’t had chance to change out of his puke-covered shirt when he hears a very familiar voice calling his name. He squeezes his eyes shut. Well, there goes his celebration at Jacobi’s dancing with Kath. 

“In ‘ere.” He calls through the door, not wanting to let the steam out of the room. Katherine, to her credit, manages not to look totally disturbed when she opens the door to what is essentially, at this point, a sauna, and discovers her vomit covered boyfriend slumped against the side of the bed. “Kath, hey. ‘Fraid we ain’t gonna make it to that dance tonight.”

…

Once Carl is settled (and Jack has stripped off his puke-covered shirt, leaving him in his undershirt and trousers) and they are happy that he’s going to pull through just fine, Katherine manages to convince him that no, he doesn’t need to break his back sleeping on Carl’s floor all night, they can take it in turns to stay awake. Jack protests that, points out that she should go home, get some sleep, and she counters that he needs help (not to mention sleep) and that he hasn’t even told her about his first day at his new job yet. He’s lost the argument before it’s even begun. As if he could ever say no to her. 

So they lie on the ancient sofa Jack managed to haggle for at some flea market – her curled in the corner, him with his head in her lap, eyes closed - and he tells her about his day and she tells him about hers and it’s so absurdly comfortable that Jack begins to wonder if he might be lucky enough that this might be his life, eventually. That he might be able to marry her and do this every night. 

He still gets up every five minutes to go and check on Carl, because he’s a worrypot when it comes to his boys, but Katherine will take any semblance of relaxation as a win. The twenty-third time he returns from checking on Carl and settles back into his spot, eyes closed, he apologises.

“Hey, I’s sorry ‘bout not gettin’ out tonight. I knows you wanted to spend an evenin’ wi’ me an’ the boys.”

“It’s okay.” She says, carding her fingers through his hair. “This is more important.”

“I gets paid on Friday.” He sighs, opening his eyes to look up at her. That’s a mistake. She’s so beautiful he can hardly breathe, never mind speak. “More’n I’s ever been paid before. You want me to take you out to dinner or somethin’?”

“Are you sure?” She frowns, concerned. Immediately, she sees the hurt in Jack’s eyes and wants the floor to swallow her up. He tries for brightness though, when he next speaks. 

“Hey, I’s makin’ the big bucks now.”

“Okay.” A smile spreads across his face at her answer.

“Where’d you wanna go?”

“Where were you thinking?” Katherine replies, surprised. It’s normally the man’s decision. She sees, instantly, that it was the wrong answer.

“Not bein’ funny, Kath,” Jack says, scratching at the back of his neck and looking anywhere but at her, “but I ain’t exactly goin’ out to restaurants every other weekend ‘ere.”

She thinks for a moment, wracking her brains. She’s already put her foot in it once tonight, she needs to try not to make things worse. Nowhere obscenely expensive, but not so cheap that Jack will be offended that she doesn’t think he can afford it. ...Luigi’s. Luigi’s is nice. Small, family owned by nice, down to earth people. She’d reviewed them for the Sun a couple of weeks ago. She might even be able to get them a discount.

“Um, Luigi’s is nice.”

“Then we’s goin’ there.” Jack says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, and closes his eyes again. “I’ll pick you up. Six?” 

Katherine nods, shifting his head off her lap and standing up. Jack pouts at her and she rolls her eyes, stretching and heading through to the kitchen, calling back over her shoulder. 

“Speaking of, have you got any food in the house? I’m starving.”

“Uh, check out Crutchie’s cupboard. Mine won’t have nothin’ in.” Jack calls back, rolling onto his stomach and propping his chin on the sofa’s rickety arm so that he can watch her through the doorway. 

“I thought you’d be cooking up a storm in here.” Katherine teases, making her way over to Crutchie’s cupboard.

The door of the cupboard squeals painfully when she pulls it open and Jack makes a mental note to put some oil on the hinges when he has time. Katherine examines the contents. Bread, porridge oats, cheap starchy foods that fill your belly without breaking the bank. She shouldn’t have expected anything less. Katherine takes two slices of bread and spreads them with jam, all the while promising herself that she’ll buy Crutchie a whole loaf to make up for them.

“Can’t do much o’ that wi’ no ingredients.” Jack snorts.

She freezes. Turns to face him.

“Jack, you haven’t…”

“No extra money coming in from start o’ October til Friday, Kath. What was I s’posed to do?” Jack shrugs, like it’s nothing, like it’s unimportant. Katherine debates between slapping him upside the head for his stupidity or running over to cradle him. In the end, she just frowns.

“Ask for help?” 

“Don’t need help.” Jack shrugs again. “I’s lived on a lot less than one meal a day before.”

Katherine wants to strangle him. Doesn’t he understand how precious he is? What it would do to her if she lost him? He can’t just go around starving himself and pretend like it’s nothing. It’s not nothing. Katherine closes her eyes and stabs the knife back into the jar of jam. A squelch and flying droplets of raspberry sugar water confirm her frustration. 

“But you’re still buying food for the newsies.” It’s not a question, even though he hasn’t said her anything about it. She knows him too well. Jack at least has the decency to look embarrassed.

“They’s outside all day. They needs it more’n me.” 

It’s been all of one day and it already feels like the guilt is eating him alive. Guilt for sitting in a cushy, warm office all day while his brothers are freezing their fingers off on the streets. Guilt for having what they don’t.

Katherine throws her hands up in the air, sending some of the jam on the knife flying across the kitchen to splatter on the opposite wall. Katherine looks over at it, a little guilty, but realises it would be very difficult to make that horrific wallpaper any worse. If anything, the jam stain improves it. She transfers the slices of bread onto a chipped plate and marches back into the living to sit beside him.

“Malnourishment was the reason you got sick last time.” She says, taking one of the pieces of bread and setting it in his lap. He isn’t getting away with this one. 

“I got sick ‘cos the Delanceys shoved a bottle in my side.” Jack counters, picking up the slice of bread and attempting to put it back on her plate. She’s too quick for him though, holding it out of his reach.

“If you don’t eat it, I won’t kiss you.” She threatens, half-reclined on the sofa and really, really, hoping that he doesn’t call her bluff. 

“That’s playin’ dirty, Ace.” He scowls.

“A girl’s got to do what a girl’s got to do.” Katherine shrugs, trying not to let a smile spread across her face. 

Jack scowls still further, but takes a begrudging bite of his slice of bread. Triumphant, Katherine digs into her own, now unable to suppress her smug smile. She’s won and they both know it. He glances over at her, then grumbles incoherently. 

“Pardon?” She blinks at him, looking like butter wouldn’t melt.

“I says,” Jack swallows and Katherine has to try very hard not fixate on the way his Adam’s apple bobs in his throat “‘s blackmail, this is.”

“I prefer to think of it as incentivisation.” She replies, elbowing him gently. Jack rolls his eyes, but takes the last few bites of his bread without verbal complaint. His expression, however, remains stormy. “There,” she smirks, “was that so bad?”

Without warning, Jack leans over and presses a kiss to her lips, not deep and passionate like the usual Jack Kelly kisses were, just sort of there, affectionate and pleasant. Before Katherine can coax him into something deeper, though, before she can tug him down on top of her to kiss him properly, he pulls away.

“There, was that so bad?” He smirks back, before getting up to go and check on Carl. 

…

Jack is woken up at two in the morning by the soft creak of Crutchie’s bedroom door. He squints up in the darkness to see a rather guilty looking Katherine holding a full pitcher of water, clearly going to refill the kettles. He lets her slip past to do her job, only catching at her skirt when she re-emerges and shuts the door behind her.

“You shoulda woken me.” Jack grumbles, rolling his shoulders to stretch them out. “Didn’t mean to fall asleep, it jus’ sorta… happened.” 

“You looked peaceful, I didn’t want to wake you.” She whispers back, a soft smile gracing her features. 

Jack groans low, cursing his aching back, and pushes himself up from the floor. Around midnight, Carl had had another coughing fit, a really bad one, and whilst Jack knows perfectly well that this croup is not bad and it’s a case that he can definitely handle, he settled down to wait out the night outside the bedroom, just to make sure. Katherine, the stubborn, beautiful girl, had flat-out refused to go and get some sleep in his room, like he’d told her to, and had slumped down beside him, informing him that if he was going to be an idiot, then she’d just have to be an idiot too. At some point, he must have fallen asleep. He takes the pitcher from her hands and carries it back to the kitchen, speaking to her in a voice still hazy and clouded with sleep, low and accented in a way that makes her stomach twist. 

“Thanks for stayin’. ‘Course, you didn’t hafta. But, thanks.” He sets the pitcher on the sideboard and leans against the counter. 

“You’re welcome.” Katherine smiles, soft and sleepy, knowing that’s as close to an _I’m glad you didn’t leave me alone_ as she’s going to get out of him, and crosses the kitchen to tuck herself into his side. She presses a kiss to his cheek, then rests her head in the place where his neck meets his shoulder that she has claimed as her own. “Good practice for when it’s ours.”

“Ours, huh?” The arm that Jack has wrapped around her waist squeezes her a little closer to him. 

The only light in the kitchen is the moonlight streaming in through the window. Jack hasn’t gotten around to buying curtains yet for any room except Crutchie’s, as much as everybody – Katherine, Medda, Crutchie himself – nags him about it. It paints the room in a thousand blue shadows, smoothing out the blemishes on the countertops and erasing the pattern of the hideous wallpaper. The landlord had told Jack he wasn’t allowed to paint the walls. He had such big plans too, murals of Santa Fe and great sweeping strokes of blue and green. He isn’t even allowed to put nails in the walls to hang any pictures up. Jack is more than a little irritated about it.

Neither one of them looks at the other, both of their gazes focused, even in the half-light, on the sliver of Crutchie’s bedroom door that is visible from their position. Even so, Jack can practically hear the smile on Katherine’s face when she next speaks. 

“If you’re still up for that, that is.” She looks up at him, a challenge in her eyes. He loves her like this. This Katherine is one of his particular favourites, though he loves every version of her. This Katherine is the one that doesn’t take any of his nonsense. This is his smart girl. 

“Oh, Ace,” he chuckles, “you have no idea.”

“What?”

“You’s seriously wantin’ me to clarify whether I still wants you to have my baby?” Jack shakes his head. “You’s outta your mind, Kath.” 

“That’s not a yes.” That smile, again, in her voice. He’s had enough of it. He wants to wipe that smile off her face, the damn tease. 

“How’s this for a yes?” He practically growls, spinning them around and penning her in against the sideboard, one arm on either side of her. 

It isn’t gentle, by any means, the way he’s devouring her, that little way that makes her feel weak at the knees, but it’s certainly not unpleasant. So Katherine can hardly be blamed for what she does next, which is to hook her fingers into the belt loops on his trousers and pull him against her, his hips flush against hers. Jack groans, dropping his head onto her shoulder and setting to on her neck, licking and laving and nipping at the sensitive skin, working his way up to what he’s discovered is her favourite spot, just below and behind her ear.

“I’ll take it.” She breathes, utterly, utterly content. 

He hums into her skin, feeling very pleased with himself when one particularly well-placed nip elicits something that he’s pretty sure can only be described as a moan. Jack feels all puffed up and proud in the knowledge that he knows exactly how to wind her up, exactly where to kiss and touch and exactly the way to trail his fingers up her sides and exactly just how hard to tug at the hair at the nape of her neck to make her gasp for him. He’s never known someone else so well; he's mapped out every bit of her. He’s feeling very pleased, in fact, until she rolls herself against him, pressing every inch of her so tight against him that he’s pretty sure she knows _exactly_ how pleased he is.

“Careful, Kath, unless you’s wantin’ that baby sooner than I was thinkin’.” Jack teases, easing himself away from her just slightly (in what he considers a move of immense and applaudable self-control) before he embarrasses them both. 

Katherine, however, doesn’t seem to care, pulling him back against her. It’s at that moment that Jack has never been more grateful to hear coughing in his entire life. Not because he doesn’t want this, oh no, but because he wants it so badly he thinks he might just die without it and he will not shame her like that, not what she’s told him how she feels, he will not.

“I’ll go.” He pulls away, shooting her a grin, and heads back to Crutchie’s room to check on Carl. 

“ _God._ ” Katherine mutters, breathless, as he walks away, bracing her hands against the countertop to stop herself falling over now he isn’t holding her up. 

“You can jus’ call me Jack, sweetheart.” Jack grins, turning around in the kitchen doorway to throw her a wink. 

She throws a dishcloth at his head. 


	16. Chapter 16

Things start to go a little bit pear-shaped when Katherine slips in the back door of the Pulizter mansion at six the next morning, hoping to get changed and get out to work again without anybody even knowing she was gone. Six is, however, apparently not early enough to escape the gaze of the servants, whose eyes all turn on her the second she walks in. She cringes. _Well,_ she thinks, _there’s no turning back now._ She sticks her chin in the air and greets them as cordially as she can muster, then takes the stairs up out of the kitchen. She only gets halfway up them before she hears an explosion of giggling from the maids behind her. Katherine squeezes her eyes shut.

She thinks she’s mostly got away with it though, aside from the embarrassment, and is setting off for work when it happens. As she passes the door of her father’s office, eyes trained on the front door – so close, the door handle practically within her grasp - he calls her in, telling her to shut the door behind her. That’s when she knows that there’s trouble. 

Her father leans back in his chair, looking at her over the gold rims of his glasses which glint the lamplight. 

“I was informed by my staff, this morning, that you didn’t come home last night.” He says, pressing his fingertips together, making a pyramid of his hands, elbows resting against the edge of his desk. 

_Damnit._ Katherine would bet her life it was Greaves who had told her father. Who else would it have been? All of the maids are too afraid of her father to ever speak to him, other than Annie who has been there the longest and she’s far too nice. The cook had liked her ever since she was a child. No, it had to be Greaves. Maybe Jack had been right about the man not liking him. 

She squeezes her eyes closed. How to start this? Better yet, how to end it? Katherine opens her mouth and grits out:

“One of the newsies-“

“I’m not interested in excuses, Katherine.” Her father cuts her off and she has to bite her tongue to stop herself from snapping at him for it. “Were you with him?”

“Yes. I was.” _Of course._ No concern for her well-being, oh no, just whether she was with Jack. Well, let him say what he likes. She juts her chin out, defiant. 

“Where did I go wrong with you?” Her father slams his fists down on his desk, getting to his feet like a rocket exploding up from his seat to continue his tirade. “What did I do to deserve such a wilful, ignorant-“

“Exploiting your workers and sending innocent children to prison might have something to do with it.” Katherine snaps. 

“So you admit that your behaviour was inappropriate?” He cries, a glint in his eyes. 

Katherine bites her tongue once more. She needs to keep it together, she knows this. One of them has to in every argument, one of them has to keep their cool. Many, many, years of living with her father have taught her that much. If not, then the house might as well crumble around their ears. 

“A child was sick.” She says, fixing her stare on the portrait of her grandfather that hangs above the desk, above her father’s head. Her grandfather stares back, vaguely disapproving. “I was there to help care for him. Please, enlighten me as to how that is in any way inappropriate.”

“It was inappropriate because you stayed the home of that boy overnight, without a chaperone.” _This, again?_

“Why should I apologise to you for a sin I haven’t committed? It’s not like I was in his bed!” Katherine snaps, her tone more caustic than she intended. 

There’s a sick sort of pleasure that pools in her stomach when she sees her father flinch at her final words. The thought hurts him and she revels in it. Such delight doesn’t last very long though, because he schools his features back into righteous anger and grinds his fist into the desk.

“I don’t give a damn about whether you’re letting him disgrace _you_ , Katherine, you’ve already disgraced yourself. But I will not allow you to shame this family-“

“Well it’s not much of a family, is it?” She’s done. She’s so done. “It hasn’t been a family since Lucy died. And I’m sorry that I’m a _slut,_ Father, I’m sorry that I’m not your perfect daughter, but she died two years ago and I can’t replace her.”

Silence. Complete silence. Silence so loud it’s deafening. Her words ring in her ears like the bell of a boxing match; her words, some of them that used to be his, repurposed, twisted. He’d always told her to use her words. Had he known that they could sting so much? Had he thought that one day every word she spoke to him would be like a curse? 

“I am trying to protect you.” He says, finally, turning away and pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger.

“You are trying to protect your reputation.” Katherine snaps. Her words hit his back like bullets. She sees him flinch. In that moment, the anger drains out of her. She feels empty. She wants Jack, she wants Lucy, she wants the newsies. She wants her family. “I don’t expect you to like Jack, lord knows he doesn’t like you. But I expect you to trust me to make my own judgements about what is right and wrong. About my career. And about who I love. Or you’re going to lose another daughter.”

He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t even look at her. 

“I’m late for work.” 

…

Jack spends the morning at work drawing furiously. He’s exhausted from going half the night with no sleep and is worried up to his eyeballs about Carl, even though he knows that Race is perfectly capable of following the instructions he’d left until he gets back. But this job has been a stroke of luck and no mistake and he’s not going to screw it up. He’s gone days without sleeping or eating before, and he can’t remember a time when he wasn’t stressed about something or other, so he’ll be fine. He will. 

The other illustrators, who, by this time, he has learned are named Daniel, Walter, and Ernest, go on their lunch break every day at twelve o’clock and go to the park around the corner. He’d actually had something to eat the day before – when he’d left his apartment he’d discovered that Sarah and Esther had left him a lunch in a brown paper bag on his doorstep, bless their souls – but he’s spent half of his time this morning trying to think of an excuse not to join them that won’t stop them wanting to be around him. Because he doesn’t want them to see him unable to afford anything to eat. Because they’re actually, genuinely, great. Because he’d really like to be Jack, their colleague, not Jack, the charity case. He really does like them.

Daniel is his age, fresh out of art school. The stories he tells about the training he received and the studio experiences he had make Jack’s mouth water. The kid is pretty shy, with wire-framed glasses, to match his wiry frame, that he is perpetually pushing back up his sharp nose. He seems to think that Jack is the coolest person he’s ever met and if he wants to think that, Jack certainly isn’t going to be the one to correct him. 

Walter is a round-faced, middle-aged man with the kind of protruding belly that tells Jack he’s never missed a meal in his life. He also laughs more than anybody Jack has ever met, which Jack thinks might have something to do with not missing meals. He spends the majority of his days making jokes and at lunchtime settles down to enjoy whatever it is his wife has packed for him. She leaves him love notes on top of his sandwiches as if they haven’t been married for twenty years with two children. He has a picture of them on his desk: his round-faced wife and their two small, round-faced children. Jack wonders if that's what he and Kath might be like, one day. 

Ernest lives up to his name. Despite being only twenty-six, the bloke is perpetually serious and only speaks about work – Jack learned quickly that the Bartleby-esque man never does the cartoons. However, he doesn’t seem to dislike Jack specifically, as he treats everybody on the team with the same level of indifferent silence, so he isn’t going to take it personally. 

Just as the three men start rumbling about heading around the corner to the park bench to eat their lunches, the secretary – Miss Rhodes, Jack thinks it is, though he can’t quite remember the name of the simpering, bespectacled woman – creaks open the door.

“Mr. Kelly?” Jack looks up. “You’ve got a visitor.” 

Katherine swans in with that confident walk of hers, looking like she owns the place, and she knocks his veneer of confidence aside and his breath right out of him. Jack stands up so fast that he has to grab onto his chair to stop it falling over. He doesn’t dare turn his head to look at his colleagues and see their reactions. 

“Ace? What-“ He stammers. _Come on, Kelly, get it together._ Behind him, Daniel, Walter, and Ernest’s eyes flit between the two of them as if they’re watching a particularly entertaining tennis match. 

“I said I’d make sure you had lunch this week, didn’t I?” She smiles, her eyes flicking over to his colleagues pointedly and then back to his face. _Smart girl._ She cares enough to bring him lunch and not embarrass him by dragging his poverty out into their gaze. So what if Walter’s wife leaves him love notes? Jack has something better even than that. He remembers what Crutchie had said to him the other day. _She’s a keeper._ “What with it being your first week and all.”

“But – work?” He says, struck down a little by the sheer luck he has, to have someone like her. 

“It’s my lunch break.” Katherine says. 

_I was sad and I wanted to see you because you make me happy. You make me forget about my problems and solve the ones that I can’t. I want to remember that I have a family who loves me in you, not just a family by blood._ She thinks all these things, though she doesn’t say them. She doesn’t need to; she’s said most of them before. He knows. He knows her. He can hear every little thing he needs to in those four words. Jack looks into her eyes as he takes the brown paper bag from her fingers and sets it on his desk, searching them for where the pain is, what has caused it, how he can fix it. Their gazes mingle for a second more than is entirely appropriate and Katherine has to remind herself that there are, in fact, other people in the room. She shoots his colleagues a smile over his shoulder, then looks back up at him. 

“However, I’ve already used up half of it, walking over here so I’d better get back. Have a good day.”

She doesn’t want to go, of course she doesn’t, but she has to. It’s okay, though, because the sight of his face has done her more than enough good to get her through the rest of the day.

“I’d, uh-“ Jack desperately wants to kiss her, pull her to him and cup her beautiful face in his hands, but he just holds his ink-stained palms up in the air, half in surrender, half showing her the mess he’s made, “-but, y’know, ink.”

“I should have known you’d still manage to find a way to get mucky.” She laughs, then softens. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?” 

“Yeah, tomorrow. See you, Ace.” He watches her go. 

“Who was that?” Ernest frowns.

They are the first words the man has spoken all day, so Katherine has clearly made quite an impression. It’s difficult for Jack to drag his eyes away from the door she’s just left through, but he manages it, turning back to the three men who are all looking at him with varying levels of expectancy.

“Katherine Plumber.” Jack finally says. 

“And? Who is she?” Daniel asks, leaning forward in something akin to awe.

“She’s…” _an angel come to save me,_ “…well, she’s the girl I’s steppin’ out with.” 

…

Every lunchtime that week, Katherine walks the fifteen minutes to Jack’s office and hands him a bag lunch. On Friday, Jack finally times it right and manages to slip out a few moments early to intercept her outside, rather than enduring another stilted conversation under the watchful eyes of his colleagues. 

She sees him, leaning against the wall beside the entrance, before she gets to him, and picks up her pace before she even thinks about it. Jack grins when he sees her, pushing off from the wall and striding over to take her by the waist and spin her around before planting a kiss on her lips.

“Hey.” He smiles down at her as she twines her arms around his neck. 

“Hey.” 

Jack can’t take his eyes off her, can’t help it as he wraps his arms around her waist. He doesn’t know how he’s come to this, how he’s managed to get ahold of this beautiful, talented, kind woman and not let her slip through his fingers, but he’s going to hold onto her as long and as hard as he can. 

“Lunch.” She smiles up at him, holding up the brown paper bag. 

“Really?” Jack widens his eyes to a comic degree. “I thought you was bringin’ me a puppy.”

“Shut up, Kelly.” She grins back, shoving the bag into his chest. 

Jack takes hold of it and staggers backwards as if she’s shot him, not batted at his chest. He clutches the bag to his chest, playing at being wounded, and Katherine can’t help but laugh at his antics. 

“Oh ho, _Kelly_ now, is it?” He asks, stepping toward her, into her space. He’s crowding her, penning her in, and the smell of him, the heat of him so close to her, is enough to make her head spin.

“That’s what it says on your rap sheet.” She says, pushing through the sudden dryness of her mouth, and looking up at him from under her eyelashes in the way she knows he loves. 

His little sharp intake of breath is supremely gratifying, knowing that she’s got to him, that he’s as pleased to see her as she is to see him. It doesn’t last long, though, because he gets that wicked, cheeky grin on his face and then pushes his tongue into the hollow of his cheek. It makes Katherine wonder what his tongue would feel like on her skin. And then she can’t think any more, because he’s put his mouth close to her ear and is whispering. 

“On Monday night it was _god_ , I liked that better.” 

She’s pretty sure that her heart actually stops for a minute, feeling his warm breath fanning across her neck. He’s completely shameless, always has been, she’s known it from the first time she spoke to him. Katherine before the strike never would have believed she’d be getting the newspaper delivered personally, but here she is. 

“You’re impossible.” She finally recovers herself, but Jack looks smug. 

“‘Ey, you love it.” Oh, she could just kiss that smile right off his stupid face. 

“I love _you_ , there’s a difference.” She tells him, poking him in the chest to make him take a step back. 

“‘S jus’ part of my roguish charm.” He winks at her, the shameless boy. Katherine snorts in the most unladylike manner possible. Jack wonders whether there’s something wrong with him because he still seems to find it adorable. “We still on fo’ tonight?”

“Yes.” She nods, trying not to show quite how excited she is about this whole thing. “You’re picking me up from my house?” 

“I’s a gentleman, ain’t I?” Jack grins, throwing his arms wide.

“Debatable.” She leans up and kisses him. “You’re a pretty good artist though. That sketch you left in my pigeonhole this morning was beautiful.”

“Don’t look a’ me, that sketch was from a secret admirer. Said so on the back an’ everythin’.” He smiles, brushing a strand of hair back from her face. 

“In your handwriting, you goof!” She rolls her eyes, then looks at her watch and sighs. Jack isn’t the only one who wants to make time stop. “I’ll see you tonight.”

“See you, Ace.” 

…

Jack Kelly has a list of his favourite feelings in the world. Top of that list is, of course, the feeling of being around Katherine. Particularly if it involves her telling him that she loves him, or her kissing him, or her playing with his hair. Second is laughing with his boys. Newly added in third place, however, is the feeling of holding in his hand an envelope containing twenty-three dollars. 

Jack is street smart; he knows that he shouldn’t carry it so obviously on his way back to the apartment, but he can’t bring himself to stop clutching the manilla envelope, slightly worried that if he lets go of it even for a second then it will disappear. Crutchie isn’t in when he gets back, so he sits at the kitchen table and counts it out. And then he counts it out again, just to make sure it’s real. 

He is nothing, however, if not pragmatic, so he sorts it into piles depending on what it’s for. He tucks rent and food money away behind the pans stacked on the side, tucks some away in between the drawings in his bedroom, and leaves some on the table for Crutchie, along with a hastily scribbled note instructing him to buy all the boys dinner from him, along with some extra sweets for Carl. The kid had been taken back to the lodgehouse the day before with no more problems than a wheezy chest. According to Crutchie, he was already back hawking papes and milking his bad chest for sales. 

And some of it goes in the pocket of his good suit, the one he puts on after he’s shaved and actually combed his hair. (He combed his hair with his fingers, but still, it’s the thought that counts, right?) By the time he gets to Katherine’s door, of course, his hair is a mess again under his hat, but hey, he can’t get everything right.

Predictably, Greaves opens the door. Katherine is always telling him that Greaves doesn’t have particularly strong feelings about anybody, it’s not his business to, but Jack just knows that the man hates him. Admittedly, he doesn’t do much to help his own case.

“Greaves! How’s buttling goin’ today?” Jack grins, leaning against the pillar that supports the porch. 

He’s rather proud of that word. Katherine is always teaching him new ones, or at least, she says ones that he doesn’t understand and he looks them up in Davey’s dictionary. 'Buttle' is one of his particular favourites, just because of the way it feels on his tongue when he says it. He’s been trying to slip it in to as many conversations as possible. 

“Mr. Kelly.” _Greaves, ecstatic as ever to see me._ “Are you here for Miss Katherine?”

“I am indeed!” Jack remains obnoxiously cheerful. “Be a doll an’ get her fo’ me, wouldja?” 

Greaves shuts the door in his face. Jack settles himself against the pillar a little more comfortably, aware that the butler will take as long as humanly possible to fetch Katherine purely in order to inconvenience him. 

“Excuse me?” Comes a deep voice from behind him and Jack turns around, coming face to face with none other than Mr. Joseph Pulitzer. _Ah, shit._

It’s clear on Pulitzer’s face that Jack Kelly was the last person he was expecting to see stood on his doorstep at that particular moment. For a second, Jack wonders how he hadn’t been recognised by the older man when he was walking up the road to the house, but then remembers what Katherine has told him about her father’s deteriorating eyesight. 

“Mista Pulitzer.” Jack touches his hand to the peak of his cap in greeting. He thinks he deserves an award for his civility, under the circumstances.

“Mr. Kelly.” The older man’s lip curls. “I sincerely hope you are not here to protest your employment status.”

“Oh no, sir,” Jack grits out, “the Delanceys made your feelin’s perfectly clear. I’s workin’ for the Wall Street Journal now.”

Pulitzer frowns. _So,_ Jack thinks, _Katherine hasn’t told him that piece of information._ It delights him, getting to break the news to his former employer. It feels like a battle victory in this endless war that they’re waging. Jack has fought other guys over girls before, who hasn’t, but he’d never expected the other guy to be her father. And he certainly hadn’t expected to have to fight without using his fists. 

“What reason, then, are you going to give to the police when I report you for trespassing on my property?” Pulitzer asks.

The mention of the bulls sends a jolt of panic through Jack. He’s only just got back on his feet, he can’t go to prison now. Not again. He just can’t. If adult prison is anything like the Refuge, then he wants absolutely nothing to do with it. He swallows heavily.

“I ain’t trespassin’.” Jack states, thanking his lucky stars that his voice doesn’t shake. “But I can wait to pick up your daughter at the end o’ the path if you wants, so I ain’t on your property.”

“Do.” Pulitzer smiles in a way that makes his skin stretch tight over his bones. “The maid scrubbed the front step today, I don’t want any dirt on it.” 

Jack clenches his jaw, but walks to the end of the path and takes a large, exaggerated step onto the pavement. He feels like an idiot, but he isn’t going to risk having Pulitzer calling the bulls on him for the sake of the five feet of path between the door and the street. 

Pulitzer sneers like he’s won and turns to open the door, only to be faced with Katherine, looking, to Jack, like a bloody _vision_. She’s wearing this blue dress and, though Jack is the first to admit that he knows absolutely nothing about fashion, it does something that makes her look even more beautiful than usual. She looks between her father and Jack, who lifts his hand in an awkward, dazed sort of greeting from the end of the path before shoving his hands back in his pockets, and then pushes past the older man. At least, she tries to. He catches her wrist as she walks by. She turns around and Jack doesn’t need to be able to see her face to know that there is fire in her eyes. He almost pities Pulitzer for being on the receiving end of Katherine’s wrath, but then he remembers who it is he’s thinking about and realises that he doesn’t feel the slightest bit sorry for him. Katherine wrenches her arm from his grip, stony-faced and marches down the path to meet Jack.

He plans to tell her how beautiful she looks, he honestly does, but before he even gets the chance she reaches up and pulls his lips down to her own. It’s something else, this kiss, all teeth and tongue and passion, and honestly? Jack has no idea what to do with it. His hands automatically reach for her waist, but he manages to stop them just centimeters from her body, stretching his fingers out, his hands in a gesture of surrender. Her father hasn’t even gone inside yet, for pity’s sake.

Finally, that thought – _shit, her father_ – works its way through his thick skull and he pulls away, half mad with it, eyes wide, and offers her his arm. Katherine takes it without hesitation and almost drags him down the street until they’re almost a block away. Even when she finally slows down, it takes him a good minute before he works up the courage to ask. 

“Do you wanna talk-“

“No.” Katherine replies, staring straight ahead and continuing to march them forward at a ferocious speed. _Well, ask a silly question._ Jack nods. 

“You look very beautiful.” Katherine softens at that, smiles a little, and looks up at him. 

“Thank you. You don’t look too bad yourself.”

…

Luigi’s, it turns out, is a quiet little place tucked away on a side street in Queens, all slow-burning oil lamps and red-chequered tablecloths. Jack feels very proud of himself when he remembers to open the door for her and then even more so when he gets to say _reservation for two, name’s Kelly_ to the waiter. He’s almost shocked that the waiter doesn’t question it, question him, question his right to be there, and rather just leads them to the table. He’s so shocked that he nearly doesn’t remember to pull Katherine’s chair out for her, but he realises at the last second and ends up almost leaping over the table to do it. Katherine cracks up at that.

It’s nice to hear her laugh like that, good-natured and open, eyes alight and kind. In the early days, the heady summer evenings straight after the strike, he had found it difficult when she laughed. Jack Kelly isn’t the kind of person who gets laughed at - and people who laugh at him will have to try to do it again with a fist in their mouth. It’s taken him a while to realise that Katherine never actually laughs at him, at his failings, because she doesn’t see them as failings. (He thinks she’s delusional not to see them as failings, but that’s beside the point.) She doesn’t laugh _at_ him, but _with_ him. And that’s an entirely different thing. 

Once they are seated and Katherine has sufficiently teased him about his eagerness, a different man, older, with olive skin and dark, receding hair, comes over to take their order. His face lights up when he sees Katherine. 

“Miss Plumber!” He cries in a thick Italian accent, throwing his arms wide in delight and almost sending one of the waiters, carrying a tray of delicious smelling food, flying.

“Mr. Rossi!” Katherine smiles, standing to kiss him on both cheeks. “It’s lovely to see you again.”

Jack remains seated, trying in vain to work out how the hell this man knows Katherine. Maybe he was some sort of family friend – no, not aristocratic enough. A former member of staff perhaps? A colleague from the Sun? 

“The pleasure is all mine!” The man exclaims, then turns to Jack. “And who is this lucky young man?”

“Oh, forgive me,” Katherine turns and shoots him a smile bright and wide enough to light up the whole room, “this is Mr. Jack Kelly.”

“Pleased to meet’cha, sir.” Jack stands up and shakes his hand firmly.

“And you too! Any friend of Miss Plumber is a friend of ours.” He turns back to Katherine. “We have never seen so many customers since you published that article about my little restaurant. Look, see!” 

He picks up one of the leather-bound menus and flips it open to show a page of newspaper mounted on the inside. Katherine laughs, disbelieving, and takes it from the man’s hands to study it more closely. That’s her article. Her article. 

“Soup of the day, on the house, for both of you. And a bottle of wine. I will be right back.” 

Katherine sinks back down into her seat, unable to tear her eyes away from her article. Her article, being seen by everyone in this restaurant. 

“Look a’that, Ace,” Jack nudges her foot with his own under the table, “you’s so good they’s framed it.”

She looks back up at him, face flushed, and folds the menu once more, placing it back on the tabletop. Jack looks… he looks proud of her. Katherine has almost forgotten what that looks like. 

“It’s just good publicity.” She shrugs, glancing around to look anywhere but at him. 

“No, Ace,” Jack says, reaching across the table and covering her hand with his own, squeezing it gently until she looks up to meet his eyes, “‘s talent. I’s real proud o’ you, miss star reporter.” 

Katherine could swear that her heart grows about three sizes in her chest. It’s not that nobody has ever told her that they’re proud of her before, or that she needs them to. It’s that Jack cares enough to tell her. She shrugs a little, allowing a smile to spread across her face. 

“It is pretty nice.”

“Damn right!” He exclaims, then, wincing, lowers his voice, looking around at the other diners. “Sorry, is you allowed to say _damn_ in a place like this?” 

“Yes, Jack,” Katherine smiles, squeezing his hand in return, “you can say anything you want. It’s just us.”

Dinner is lovely, but the best bit, for Jack, comes at the end of the meal. He takes great delight in paying the bill at Luigi’s, taking crisp dollar bills out of his pocket and handing them over, and taking Katherine’s arm as they exit the restaurant. 

“Thank you for dinner.” She says, smiling up at him before leaning her head on his shoulder as they walk down the street.

Something warm and unfamiliar rises in Jack’s chest at her words. This is him. All him. He’s the one taking her out, spending money on her for a change. He looks up at the moon and wishes he could buy it for her, if it would make her happy. 

“I used’ta think the moon was bigger in Santa Fe, y’know.” He tells her. “Davey told me th’other day that it ain’t true.”

“He’s right.” Katherine smiles.

It melts her heart to think of Jack as a child. She sees glimpses of that Jack, sometimes, Jack the dreamer, staring out of a window at the moon and wondering what it would be like in Santa Fe. She cries over that Jack too, sometimes, that he didn’t get a chance to grow up unbroken. Not because she’d change a thing about Jack as he is, but just because she wishes that other Jack had had a chance. 

“Are you disappointed?” She asks. 

Katherine knows that she shouldn’t worry about Jack leaving, but she does. Each evening she prays that she won’t wake up in the morning and find out that he’s cleared off to Santa Fe. She trusts him, of course, trusts that he wouldn’t do that to her, to his boys. But still. She wants to fist her hands in his shirt like a promise, like tying them together. 

“Nah.” He shakes his head. “Jus’ kinda sealed the deal that Santa Fe ain’t where I wanna wind up no more.”

She looks up at him, surprised and unsure, but he smiles down at her, warm and kind and trusting. It’s the trust that does her in, just the fact that this man who has spent years building up his walls is dismantling them, brick by brick, to let her in. He sees the question in her eyes and continues. 

“New York’s got a lotta stuff Santa Fe ain’t. An’ I ain’t in the habit o’ lettin’ go o’ good things once they’s come my way.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not immensely pleased with this chapter, but I hope you enjoy it. Also, I hope you all appreciate 'The Truth About The Moon' reference! Many thanks once again for all your lovely comments - keep 'em coming! xx


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is horrendously badly written and I am so sorry. I swear the next one is better, but this was necessary for the setup! As always, comments make my days lovely (if you can bring yourself to comment on this mess of a chapter!) xx

Jack slips out of the apartment early the next morning, even before the circulation bell starts ringing. He's tired, of course. He and Katherine had been out late last night, he'd taken her to the theatre after their dinner to see Medda's new show. It had been a little more raucous than he'd anticipated, sure, but she had seemed to enjoy it, judging by the goodnight kiss she'd given him when he'd walked her home. Crutchie, upon seeing him return the previous evening, had told him to stop grinning like an idiot. But being up late isn't going to change the fact that this is the first time he's ever had a proper weekend off in his entire life and he has a lot to do.

His first stop is Mr. Jacobi's. Mr. Jacobi is the only person that Jack knows, other than the Jacobs, who is Jewish. And this kosher stuff, Jack thinks, is complicated shit. He doesn't want to get it wrong. So he goes to Mr. Jacobi and tells him about his plan and has the man write down all the rules that he has to follow. Jack walks out of the place with a note listing all the things he can and can't get. He has no idea how the Jacobs have the energy to follow all these rules – seriously, food's food, right? – but he knows that Davey gets anxious about it whenever he makes something for all of the boys, so he's determined to get this right. After all, the Jacobs have done so much for him over the past few months. Without Davey and Esther's care, he's pretty sure he'd be dead by now.

Jack has picked out the store – one of those new, fancy department stores, the one on 59th street – by the fantastic smells that come out of its food court whenever he walks past. When he walks in, though, he regrets it immediately. He's never felt so out of place in his entire life. Jack figures he must look completely lost, because one of the salesgirls, a few years older than him, wanders over and asks him whether he needs help. _Okay, I can do this._

Plastering on a charming grin, Jack asks her to help him pick out things that are kosher. She does, and within minutes he has her fluttering her eyelashes at him and helping him choose the less expensive items. Sure, they're gifts, but Jack isn't stupid – this place is extortionate. Still, it's money that he's set aside for this purpose and from here on out it'll be going into his savings. He can't do much for the Jacobs, but he can do this. She gives him a funny look when he asks her to put the meat items and the dairy items at opposite ends of the gift basket, but that's okay. (Honestly, he doesn't know if that is a necessary precaution, but he's going to try his damnedest.)

When he gets back to the apartment, Crutchie is out selling the morning papes, so he stows the basket in the corner of his bedroom and heads over to Medda's. Katherine keeps telling him that he should pull back a bit on painting Medda's sets for her, that now that he has a real job and he doesn't need the money. Little does she know that the only time he actually gets money off Medda is when she forces him to take it. Now, Medda has no excuse. Now he can do it to pay her back for looking after him while he was ill.

Around lunchtime, Crutchie seeks him out and, for once, Jack doesn't reject the sandwiches Medda offers him, instead thrusting them at the other boy. Crutchie frowns at him, stubbornly placing half of them in Jack's lap before he can protest and then digging into his own.

"How's sellin' this mornin'?" Jack asks, taking a reluctant bite of his sandwich and feeling the bread on his tongue like lead.

It's not that he doesn't like food – he loves it. Jack would eat all day if he could; when food is scarce growing up, then you don't take it for granted. The problem comes when there's somebody else there, watching him eat, condemning him with their eyes. It makes him realise how selfish he's being, that he's got some nerve, stuffing his face with food whilst his brothers starve. It's like every morsel becomes a rock in his throat, weighing him down in his stomach, taking away that empty, hollow feeling which lets him know that, whilst his belly is cramping, his brothers are fed.

"The papes is sellin' well, great headline – load o' folks as died in a train accident." Crutchie grins around his sandwich.

"That's a piece o' luck an' no mistake." Jack says, only half sarcastic. Sure, it's a shame for those folks, but they're dead, it's not like they'll be bothered that some scrappy kids from the streets of New York will get extra food tonight because of some train they were on.

Crutchie winces, shifting uncomfortably on the edge of the stage. Jack had insisted that they sit there, on the hard wooden floorboards, because he knows from experience that Medda will kill him if he gets so much as a crumb on the auditorium seats. Jack's keen eyes don't miss the movement, though, and he tilts his head toward his friend.

"Hey, what's wi' your leg?"

"Cold's got into it, is all." Crutchie says, waving a hand.

Jack wishes that Crutchie's pain was as easy to soothe these days as it used to be. When they were younger, when they met and Crutchie, newly orphaned, turned up at the circulation desk too scared to even ask for some papes to sell and Jack had tucked the boy under his arm and paid for both their papes, it had been easy. Crutchie would cry out with cramps in the night and Jack would get up and rub the aggravated muscle until it relaxed enough to let Crutchie sleep. If it was hurting too badly, Jack would carry him. If it was cold, Jack would wrap strips of fabric around his leg for an extra layer of warmth. None of that works anymore. The pain isn't sharp and biting like it used to be, but a constant, dull ache that nothing Jack tries to do can fix. Sure, he's helping by giving Crutchie a home that is warm, but that's about it. Jack feels, as he so often does, painfully inadequate.

"Hey, Crutchie?"

"Yeah?"

"How'd you feel 'bout goin' to school?"

Crutchie looks at Jack as if his friend has spontaneously sprouted an extra head and promptly chokes on his sandwich. Within seconds, Jack is slapping the boy on the back in an attempt to dislodge the food in Crutchie's throat because the two of them have been through too much together for Jack to lose him to a fucking sandwich. Crutchie waves him away, though, and Jack sits back as his friend gasps and downs both glasses of water that Medda had brought them, feeling a little bit silly about his overreaction – he's just protective, alright? He can't lose Crutchie, not again.

"You's crazy." Crutchie finally croaks out and Jack looks personally affronted at the notion.

"I's serious! I can afford to look after the both of us-"

"No, Jack, no way." Crutchie says firmly. "I ain't makin' you do that."

"But-" Jack begins to protest, but he sees the dark look in his friend's eyes and promptly shuts his mouth.

Why Crutchie couldn't just let Jack help him was beyond Jack's comprehension. Crutchie was similarly incredulous about Jack's clear and crippling hero complex.

"Fine." Jack sighs, rubbing his eyes. "What- how's about this then. Walter, this guy I works with, his brother-in-law does somethin' financial. Those kinda offices is always after apprentices. They's warm, too. Why don't I ask around?"

Crutchie cocks his head to one side, considering. Jack thinks that he looks like a little bird, a song-thrush, maybe. Jack had seen one of those, once, in Madison Square Park in the summer, during the drawn-out, listless days of the strike. He'd been walking through the place with Davey, who had told him about the different birds they could see and hear. His father, Mayer, apparently had a book about birds and used to take Davey for days out in the countryside to spot them. Jack had ached for that.

"I s'pose it couldn't hurt." Crutchie finally says, as if he's doing it purely as a favour to Jack. They both know that it's the other way around, but it doesn't feel so.

…

Jack arrives at the door of the Jacob's apartment at six-thirty that evening. Davey has told him that Shabbat this week ended at five-thirty but, as he'd been repeating to himself all day, he isn't going to screw this up. Shifting the basket onto his hip, he knocks at the door. Les opens it.

"Jack!" The boy's face immediately brightens, grinning up at Jack with a gap-toothed smile.

"Hey kid!" Jack grins back, reaching down to ruffle his hair. "Can I come in?"

"Sure!" Les bounces to the side so that Jack can step into the corridor, then goes sprinting away into the kitchen. "Davey! Jack's here."

"Jack, hey." Davey emerges from what Jack knows to be the living room of the Jacob's apartment, his brows knit together in friendly confusion. "Are you alright?"

Jack stands in the hallway and realises, suddenly, that he has absolutely no idea what he ought to say. He doesn't really give people gifts, he's never had the money to do it before. Shifting the basket off his hip, he holds it up awkwardly.

"Yeah, yeah. I, uh, was jus' wantin' to drop this off for you. I's gon' put it on the kitchen table an' then I'll be off, don't wanna be a bother or nothin'." Jack says, setting off for the kitchen.

"You ain't a bother." Davey says, his eyes flicking between Jack's face and the present. "Stay a while. We just finished dinner but I'm sure Mother can sort something out for you-"

He goes to turn around and call his mother, but Jack is too quick for him, setting the basket down on the table with more force than is probably necessary and grabbing the other boy's shoulder. Davey turns back to him, even more confused than before, looking between Jack's hand on his shoulder and Jack's flustered expression. Jack quickly snatches his hand away and looks down, scuffing his boots on the kitchen tiles.

"Davey, seriously, I's fine. Jus' wanted to leave this."

"And what is 'this', exactly?" Davey raises his eyebrows, gesturing in the direction of the basket.

The basket looks odd, in its shiny gift wrap (Jack would have forgone it, but the salesgirl insisted) in the tiny kitchen with its peeling paint and blackened cookpots. Jack still thinks it's the nicest kitchen he's ever been in though. It feels safe, somehow, and warm, as if the love of the family inside has seeped into the walls and the foundations, as if by eating their meals and praying there with joined hands, they've imbued it with something.

"Oh, 's jus' a thank you. For sortin' me out when I was ill, see."

Jack still won't look at him, so it's Davey's turn to reach out and squeeze his shoulder.

"Jack, you know you don't need to thank us for that, right? You're family. You'd have done it for any of us."

"Well, sure, but 's different." Jack shrugs.

Davey stands back and folds his arms. Les, the spitting image of his brother in looks, though certainly not in personality, does the same. If Jack wasn't so uncomfortable, he'd laugh at the absurdity of it. How these two had grown up in this house together without killing one another, he'll never know.

"How?" Davey asks, unimpressed.

"Well, I- I-" Jack stutters.

"Exactly." Davey smiles, triumphant, feeling the way he did in Medda's theatre all those months ago. He wouldn't stand a chance against Jack in a fight, but an argument? He'll win every time. Jack just ducks his head, though, which makes Davey's smile drop and him hasten to continue. "It was very nice of you though. To think of us, I mean. Let me get Mother-"

"Nah, nah, you don't need to bother her." Jack says, waving his hand dismissively. I's gon' be goin' now anyway-"

"Like hell you are." Davey rolls his eyes, then shouts over his shoulder. "Mama! Jack's here and he brought us something!" Jack cringes.

"Don't shout, David, dear, I can hear you perfectly well." Esther calls back from the other room.

" _David, dear_?" Jack hisses at Davey, a grin glinting in his eyes. Davey scowls and makes an exceedingly rude hand gesture at his snickering friend. As if on cue, Les' face lights up like a Christmas tree and he opens his mouth wide to call out.

"Mama, Davey just-"

Before he can finish the sentence, Davey has clamped his hand over his little brother's mouth and is pointing his finger at the boy.

"Shut it, you," he hisses, "or I tell Mama about what you said about Susie from school the other day."

Les doesn't say anything more, but he does stick his tongue out and lick a stripe along the centre of Davey's hand, which is still firmly clapped over his mouth. Davey wrinkles his nose and yanks his hand away, muttering something that Jack is pretty sure contains the word _disgusting_ , just as Esther Jacobs walks in.

"Jack, how are you doing?" She smiles brightly at him in a way that makes Jack feel warm and wanted even though he knows, deep down, that she's just being nice, that she doesn't really want him around at all. "You look well."

"I's doin' jus' fine Mrs. Jacobs, thanks. I's jus' about to get goin' though, actually –" He says, jerking his thumb over his shoulder and starting to back towards the door.

"Oh, don't be silly, you have to stay a while; Les has a new board game that he wants to try out and Mayer and I are, apparently, not fun enough." She says, giving her youngest child a look halfway between affection and exasperation. Les rolls his eyes and turns to Jack.

"'S board game about travellin' in Asia and they keep distractin' from it with facts about the countries. You play with them and it turns into a literal _bored_ game." Jack snorts at Les' complaint.

"Anyway," Davey tugs the conversation back on track, "Jack brought us a gift."

Esther's eyes light on the basket with no small amount of confusion, before stepping up to it and carefully unpicking the ribbon that holds it together. She peers in and lets out a soft gasp that immediately makes Jack's shoulders tense. _She hates it. It was a stupid idea._

"'S not really a gift," Jack adds, sniffing and swiping his hand under his nose, suddenly immensely interested in his shoes, "jus' sorta a thank you. Y'know, for everythin' you did when I was ill. I got paid yesterday so's I figured… anyway, if it ain't right or nothin' I can take it back – I got Mr. Jacobi to write down all them kosher rules an' stuff, but they's real hard to follow an'-"

He isn't expecting to feel arms around him, pulling him close, and he tenses under the unexpected pressure, desperately fighting the panic that is rising in his lungs because someone is fucking touching him and he wants to lash out. His dumb brain, however, eventually figures out that the person hugging him is Esther, and she's touching him in a way that doesn't hurt, that doesn't want to hurt him, and if that isn't just the darnedest thing. Don't get him wrong, Jack doesn't manage to hug her back, just sort of stands there with his arms pinned to his sides and not sure what to do, but he doesn't throw himself to the other side of the kitchen and start hyperventilating, so he's taking that as a roaring success.

When Esther releases him, there are tears in her eyes and Jack nearly chokes. Had he hurt her? He didn't think so. How had he made her sad?

"This was… well, thank you, Jack, but you really didn't have to."

"It ain't nothin'." Jack mumbles, still confused.

Les, perfectly oblivious, takes his hand and drags him into the living room where a large board with a beautifully illustrated elephant filled with oriental scenes is set before the fire. Jack is thankful for it, thankful not to have Esther's eyes on him any more. Her gaze makes him feel seen in an uncomfortable sort of way that feels like pins and needles under his skin, like she's seeing two of him; the real him and the him that might have been, if he'd grown up like Davey. If he'd had a mother like her.

Mayer is close by in an armchair and Jack eyes him, wary. Sure, Mayer's been real nice up until now, but if Jack's learned anything in his nineteen years, it's that men can turn real nasty real quick and he doesn't have the privilege of being one of the man's children to keep him safe. Not that being his father's child had ever made a difference to his beatings.

Jack, however, seats himself on a side of the board so that he's facing Mayer, so that he's ready to dodge out of the room should the man get up in anger. Mayer's leg still isn't quite right from the accident, even though he's back at work now, and Jack reckons he can make it to the door quicker than the other man. Les' enthusiasm for the game and Davey's general smiley demeanour are infectious though, and Jack soon finds himself laughing.

At the end of the first round, Jack leans in close to examine the pictures. They're beautifully done.

"Hey, kid, d'you know who did the drawin' for this? 'S real pretty." Les just shrugs, but Mayer speaks for the first time since he greeted Jack when he walked in the door.

"Are you interested in art, Jack? Davey told us about your illustrating career," _career,_ Jack almost laughs at the suggestion, "but are you a painter as well?"

"I does bits an' pieces." He replies, quiet. _Remember your place, Kelly. You're not a part of this._

"His work is amazing." Davey insists, throwing Jack a pointed look, "He paints all the sets for the Bowery theatre."

"Let me see here." Mayer mumbles, standing from his chair. Every muscle in Jack's body tenses. Esther must notice, because she leans forward a little in her seat beside him and pats his shoulder. Jack allows himself to relax, just slightly, under her touch, but his eyes follow Mayer like a hawk's. The man lifts his hand, palm open, and Jack begins to perspire, sweat blooming under his arms and on the back of his neck. He can just see what his skin would look like, if Mayer hit him with an open hand. Better than a belt, he supposes.

"Try this." Mayer selects a book from the overstuffed bookshelf on the other side of the room and extends it toward Jack.

"Oh no," Jack shifts backwards a little, "I don't borrow no books."

The one that Mayer is offering him is nowhere near the kind of book that Katherine had lent him; all of the books on the Jacob's shelves are worn thin with broken spines. However, Jack nearly got killed over the last book he borrowed, so there's no way he's taking a chance on this one.

"Okay," Mayer says, looking puzzled but placing the book down in front of Jack anyway before retreating to his chair, "well, you're very welcome to look at it here. It has some fantastic works in it. I'd be pleased to have someone to discuss them with."

Jack looks at the book how most people look at a dog tied up on a street corner. _Will it bite me? Should I stroke it? But it looks so lonely._ With one final glance at Mayer, who is now seated once more, he reaches out and takes the book, flipping to a random page and whistling low under his breath.

"'S this done wi' oil paint?" He asks, staring at a reproduction of a painting which was, according to the caption, housed in a gallery in Paris. Jack wonders whether Paris is as big as Brooklyn. It sounds like the kind of place that would have more art galleries. Mayer cranes his neck and Jack holds up the book so that the man can see.

After a moment of study, Mayer nods and settles back into his seat. "Why, yes, it is. You have a good eye."

Jack is surprised by how warm he feels when Mayer tells him that.

…

Katherine is feeling less than warm, this Saturday. No words have been exchanged between her and her father since their argument on Monday – even when he'd caught hold of her arm the night before, there had been nothing more than looks exchanged. Family meals have been physically painful, Katherine wolfing down her food in an attempt to leave the table as quickly as possible.

She's occupied sticking the latest newspaper clippings from the Wall Street Journal into her scrapbook when there's a knock at her door.

"Come in." She calls absently, assuming it's Annie bringing some more coal for her fire or some such.

"Katherine." _Oh._ She slams the scrapbook shut instantly and squeezes her eyes closed, breathing in and out for a few seconds before she turns around.

"Father."

Joseph Pulitzer hovers near the door of her room, eyes darting around behind his glasses, taking everything in. The wall above her bed is plastered with the drawings and paintings that Jack has done for her (and of her) that are too large for the scrapbook and he looks them over, examining them. Katherine juts her chin out in defiance, her eyes daring him to comment on them.

"How are you today?" Pulitzer coughs, shoulders straight and hands clasped behind his back, still, after all these years, retaining his military posture.

"Fine." She replies. Short. Clipped. Curt.

"Good." Her father nods, falling silent. His eyes flit toward the door handle, as if he wants to run out of the door, but he straightens once again and fixes her under his stare. "Does your Mr. Kelly take commissions?"

"I beg your pardon?" It's the only thing Katherine can choke out. Her father frowns.

"Mr. Kelly. Does he take commissions, for his paintings?"

Katherine's brain swarms with possibilities. She's lived in the same house as Joseph Pulitzer her whole life and she's not stupid enough to think he does anything without an ulterior motive. What new kind of trap is this, now he can't use her as bait?

"Uh, I think so." She frowns.

"Could you give him this, please?" Her father approaches her and hands her an envelope. His fingers are shaking. Katherine realises how old her father is, now. He turned fifty-two this year. Old age has made his hands shaky. "Your mother wants something new for the dining room."

With a curt nod, he turns on his heel and heads towards the door. He almost manages to leave entirely before Katherine gets herself together enough to call after him. And once she does, she's furious.

"Wait! You fired him and now you want to hire him again?" She slams the envelope down on her writing desk and springs to her feet.

"I wish to commission a painting from him." Her father replies, turning slowly to face her.

 _This isn't fair. It's not._ She can't do this anymore, these stupid mind games, this point-scoring, this game of chess with her father where he's moving Jack around like some sort of pawn to prove a point about his control over her. It's not fair on her. And it certainly isn't fair on Jack. Why can't her father just leave him alone? Well, nobody can do anything if she overturns the chessboard.

"If this is some kind of sick joke-" She cries, taking a step forward, but is cut off.

"Katherine." He sounds so old, so tired, that it saps all of her energy right out of her. "I am _trying_. Let me try."


	18. Chapter 18

“This is definitely not fo’ real.” Jack says, thrusting the envelope back at Katherine. 

She just folds her arms, fixing him with a stare. It’s been a week since Joseph Pulitzer handed Katherine the envelope and she still isn’t sure that she’s doing the right thing by actually passing it on to Jack. Personally, she’s inclined to just leave it on her father’s desk with a note telling him that Jack isn’t going to take the commission. At this rate it looks like she might end up doing, but that’s beside the point. Katherine reminds herself why she’s doing this. If Jack is the person she wants to spend the rest of her life with, it’s probably quite important that, even if her family don’t exactly like him, they’re at least on speaking terms. 

“Jack-“ she sighs. 

“I’s serious, Ace. Your father fires me an’ then decides that I’s the guy he wants doin’ a paintin’ for his house?” Jack, realising she isn’t going to take it back, tosses the envelope onto the table that is set in the middle of the Bowery stage, coming, frankly, far too close to tossing it directly into a tin of dark blue paint. He shakes his head. “No, I ain’t buyin’ it. Nuh-uh.”

“Please, Jack.” She steps toward him and places her hand on his arm, pacifying. Honestly? She has absolutely no idea how to get this one past Jack, especially not when he’s being stubborn as hell, but she’s going to have to find some sort of angle. “It’s good money-“

“I don’t want ‘is dirty money!” Jack exclaims, his muscles tensing under her fingers. She can see how much it’s taking for him not to run away from this, not to throw up his hands and throw in the towel, and she loves him for it. Katherine brings her hands up to cup his face. Two-day old stubble prickles under her fingers in a way that she tells him she doesn’t like, but, sometimes, isn’t entirely unpleasant. 

“And it would make me very happy.” 

Jack has spent half his life running. From his father, the bulls, starvation, cold, Pulitzer, his own fucked up head. It’s like an urge, a restless feeling in the pit of his stomach, born of years of not having any choice but to run. It still rises in him, when something happens. When somebody touches him the wrong way, when things get too intense. In those moments, he just wants out. He doesn’t want to go anywhere, he just doesn’t want to _be_. That’s why he shrouds himself in everything else, in confidence, in art, in Santa Fe. Except, those things, they aren’t dulling the urge the way they used to. The only things that seem to dull it anymore are people. Crutchie. Medda. Katherine. Katherine more than anyone, considering how long he’s known her for. And that’s terrifying. But it’s also what makes him agree. 

“…Fine.” He doesn’t like it. But he likes it when she’s happy. 

“Thank you!” She smiles wide, throwing her arms around him in a fierce hug, and that’s all he needs, really, huffing a breath into her shoulder. 

When she finally pulls away, planting a kiss on his cheek as she does so, even though he hasn’t shaved and she’s told him many times that she hates it when he hasn’t shaved, he crosses over to the table, taking out the sheet of notes which details the commission and leaving the wodge of banknotes firmly inside. He turns to her, pointing to the envelope like it’s something distasteful. 

“But you can take this money back, I ain’t takin’ it.”

“But-“ she starts, but he cuts her off with a look. 

“He ain’t accusin’ me o’ stealin’ nothin’ else, Ace.” Jack shakes his head, tucking the sheet of paper into his trouser pocket. “No chance.”

“Fine.”

She can live with that. Don’t get her wrong, she hates the idea of handing money back to her father that, in Jack’s hands, could have bought hundreds of meals for the newsies, but this isn’t the hill that she wants to die on. Katherine crosses the room and tucks the envelope into the pocket of her coat. Jack’s eyebrows immediately shoot upwards, calculating. He hadn’t been expecting her to fold so easily. Katherine winces. She should have put up more of a fight on this one. 

“An’ I want somethin’ else.” He says, like he knows he’s already won this negotiation. (He, of course, has, but Katherine would rather die than let him know that.)

“Name your price, Kelly.” She replies, folding her arms across her chest. 

“I wants you to model for me.” Jack grins. That is… not what she was expecting, honestly. 

“You already sketch me all the time.” She frowns. 

“Well, yeah, has you seen you, Katherine? You’s the prettiest girl in the world.” Jack chuckles, loving the way that his words cause her cheeks to bloom pink. But then the veneer slips a little and his hand flies up to tug at the hair at the nape of his neck as he says the next part. “I want to paint you. Proper, like. Medda gave me a load of old paint stuff that she was gettin’ rid of and I want to try it out.” 

It’s a long moment of him shuffling his feet awkwardly before she replies. When she does, he nearly falls over. 

“Okay.”

“You’ll do it?” His eyes fly up to her face, hopeful, embarrassed, nervous. 

“Yeah.” Katherine nods, smiling a little. 

It makes her feel awkward, sure, sitting in front of him, being _seen_ so intensely. Katherine wants attention, of course, but she wants attention for her work, not who she is. But Jack, he loves her work because it’s hers, not her because of her work. And that’s strange. It’s an unnatural feeling, knowing that when he looks at her with his eyes shining, it’s because he loves her, not because of anything she’s done. That when her article hits the front page, he’s proud of her, but he’s just as proud of her even when her article gets scrapped by Mr. Ross in one of his vindictive moods. 

She remembers the portraits of her childhood, the long hours sitting in front of leering old men with paint-stained gowns who shushed her or tutted when she shifted in her seat. On one occasion she had actually been sent to her father’s office for being _disruptive_. Well, at least Jack Kelly can’t tell her off for being disruptive. It’s practically his middle name. 

“Ace-“ He grins that ridiculous grin of his, looking like she’s just handed him the moon on a silver platter. 

“But-“ She holds up her hand, cutting him off. 

“I knew there’d be a catch.” Jack visibly deflates.

“It’s not a catch, I just…” he takes a step backwards, looking wary, and Katherine has to squeeze her eyes shut to grit out the next part, “my father wants to invite you to the Christmas party.” 

Jack doesn’t say anything for a very long moment, so she opens one eye tentatively. He’s stood a few steps away, just breathing, his chest rising and falling just a little too erratically for her liking, and then he raises his hand and points at her. 

“Okay, there is him _tryin’_ ”, Jack mutters, making quotation marks with his fingers as he quotes the words Katherine had repeated to him earlier, “an’ then there is a trap.”

“Jack-“ She starts, but he cuts her off, throwing his hands up in the air.

“Last time I come fo’ dinner at your house I got humiliated an’ then beaten within an inch o’ my life.”

Katherine stops, bites her lip. Oh, she remembers that alright, probably better than he does, if they’re honest. She’s pretty sure that the image of Jack, bruised and bloodied and feverish on that bare mattress, will haunt her for the rest of her life. In a strange, cruel way, she hopes it does. So long as she remembers, so long as she doesn’t forget, she can’t ever take him for granted. 

“I know.” She says, slow and careful, in the face of Jack’s restless energy. “But there’s lots more people at the Christmas party and you won’t actually have to talk to anyone. Plus, Constance wants to see you again, she hasn’t stopped whittering on at me about you for weeks.” 

Jack’s face softens a little at the mention of Constance. “She’s a sweet kid.”

“She wants you to play hide and seek with her.” Katherine smiles, wandering over to the paint spattered table and leaning against it, casually examining the different pigments laid out there. 

She wants to watch him, gauge his reaction, but she’s learning, albeit slowly, that pushing Jack isn’t always the way forward. Sometimes it’s best to treat him like a trapped wild animal. Not scare him away, or make him lash out, but let him come to her. So, she pretends to be very interested in the paint. And it works, because he does come, wrapping his arms around her middle from behind, like one half of the quotation mark that precedes all the words that he can’t say. He presses a kiss to the side of her neck, all strong arms and gentle fingers. 

“If it means I can hide from your father-“

“Please, Jack.” She smiles, leaning her head back onto his shoulder. Katherine knows she ought to be concerned about him leaving paint stains on her clothes, but she can’t seem to bring herself to care. It’s a sacrifice that she’s willing to make. He hums, his irritation dissipating by the second, and she feels it, reverberating through his throat and into her skin. 

“You’s lucky I love you, that’s all’s I can say.” He mutters. 

“Thankyouthankyouthankyou!” Katherine spins in his arms and throws her arms around his neck again. She can feel him chuckling, a rumble deep in his chest. 

“So, can I paint you?” He asks, warm breath fanning across her ear in a way that makes her shiver. 

“What, now?” She asks, surprised, pulling back a little to search his eyes.

“If you’s happy to.” Jack shrugs. 

“I- yeah, okay.” She nods. She figures she probably owes him this much. “Where do you want me?”

As soon as she asks it, she realises what she’s said and sees the sparkle in his eyes and the twist of his mouth, his tongue pressing into the hollow of his cheek in an attempt to stifle his smile. 

“Now that’s a loaded question, Ace.”

“Oh, be quiet, you.” She bats at his chest gently. 

“C’mon.” 

Jack, smiling, takes her by the hand and leads her backstage and through into the storage rooms right at the back of the theatre. The largest storage room is where the biggest set pieces are stacked because it’s double height, light streaming down from skylights high above. It’s dusty, so much so that Katherine coughs a little when Jack forces the door, stiff from disuse, open and leads her in. They wind a route in between the looming shadows of the set pieces, further and further into the maze of the theatre. 

Trees carved from sheets of plywood, their branches bound together with cobwebs, line the narrow walkway which they take, along with painted shop fronts and doors without hinges. It’s like the world outside, only a little bit twisted, a little bit different. If it was anybody else leading her through here, Katherine would be… not scared, but nervous. Lost. But when her thumb brushes over Jack’s wrist, his fingers intertwined with hers, she can feel his pulse, steady and warm and calming. She thinks that the sound of Jack’s heartbeat might be what she hears when she goes to heaven. It reminds her, in a world made of glass that is ready to shatter around them, that he is here and he is alive. And so is she. And really, who can ask for more than that?

Her trust is not misplaced. Soon they emerge from the maze of discarded set pieces into the back corner of the storage room, where an easel, canvas, and paints are already set up. _He’s been planning this for a while, then,_ she thinks. In front of those, illuminated only by a narrow shaft of light from a partially obscured skylight overhead, with dust particles dancing in it like fireflies, is a large object covered by a dust sheet. Jack lets go of her hand and she feels his loss like a physical ache as he bounds over and yanks the sheet away to reveal a grand piano. Well, that was certainly unexpected. 

“Do I have to play?” She blurts out.

“Nah, ‘s outta tune.” He smiles at her, taking her hand and sitting her down on the stool in front of the piano. “Jus’ sit here, yeah?”

Katherine does as he asks, trying not to shift under his gaze as he steps back, examining her. Then he steps forward again and takes her chin ever so gently between his thumb and forefinger, tilting it down just slightly. She wonders whether he’s actually been rubbing his hands over a carpet for an hour before this, because she can feel a crackle of static where he touches her. 

And then he backs up to the easel and Katherine tries to stem the flow of disappointment which she feels, settling in for what she anticipates to be another horrifically boring portrait session like those of her childhood. It’s not bad, though, she figures, so long as she gets to watch Jack do this, squeezing paint from tubes onto a piece of wood acting as a makeshift palette, brow furrowed in adorable concentration. She’s actually starting to feel quite lucky, that he’s letting her in like this, when he speaks. 

“What’re you writin’ about at th’minute?” Her eyes fly from his fingers, deftly mixing colours together, to his face. He isn’t looking at her, but the words feel deliberate, somehow, not just thrown out there for the sake of something to say. 

“Don’t you need peace and quiet to do your best work, Mr. Artiste?” She laughs quietly, embarrassed at the question. He’s asking to make her feel better, she knows this. He’s not actually interested. Why would he be? 

“You talkin’ about your work is as close to peace as I gets.” Jack smiles at her, soft and warm and open, over the top of his canvas.

“It’s not that interesting.” She blushes, looking down, then remembering that she’s supposed to be holding the position he put her in and jerking her head back up.

“You’s writin’ about it.” Jack says, making the first mark on the canvas. His eyes are flicking between her form and his canvas, and each time his eyes meet hers, clever and dark, she feels the temperature in the cool storage room surge like it’s the middle of June. “You can make flower shows interestin’, Ace. Talk to me.”

“Okay.” Katherine nods, a tiny jerk of the head, cursing herself once again for moving. “Well, it’s a piece about the senator.”

“Which one?” Jack asks. 

Katherine knows, ostensibly, that Jack couldn’t care less about politics or senators. He’s complicated in many ways, but simple in others – he cares about whether people are fed and clothed and housed and that’s about the extent of it. Katherine supposes it’s the differences in their upbringings that make her care about foreign policy and education funding when Jack doesn’t. The more you have, the more you can care about things. But honestly, he could fool most people with the kind of questions he asks. Sure, sometimes he’ll ask a question like _so what’s actually in the first amendment?_ and she’ll realise how little he truly knows about it, but half the time he asks more intelligent questions than most of the political journalists in New York. He listens to her, not in the patronisingly indulgent way that her male colleagues do and not in the half-attentive way her father does only to tear her arguments to shreds, but in a way where he takes on board what she says, asks interesting questions, and occasionally, just occasionally, presents a challenge to her viewpoint that actually succeeds in changing her mind. She’s frankly shocked by the number of times she’s changed the slant of her political articles because of a conversation with Jack, though, to his credit, he never gloats about it, even though she knows he buys a copy of the Sun from one of the newsies whenever she’s got a new article in it. 

“Chauncey M. Depew – he got in in January as the Republican candidate and there’s some rumours about his son…”

…

“Fuck!” Jack curses, throwing his pencil across the room. 

The newsies, about ten of whom are scattered across the floor of Jack’s living room in various positions, all look up. Well, most of them do. Davey does, from his position leaning rather precariously on the sofa arm, as does Albert, from where he’s dealing cards to a circle of cross-legged newsies in the corner. In fact, the only two who don’t are Race, who is draped halfway out of the apartment window ( _because you’re not smokin’ those foul things in here, Racer, not wi’ Crutchie’s lungs – my house, my rules_ ) and Smalls. Smalls, however, is in rather more danger than Race, seeing as he has to duck as he emerges from the kitchen to avoid said flying pencil hitting him in the forehead. Jack shoots Smalls an apologetic look from his position curled up by the hearth, surrounded by three-quarter empty tubes of paint, frantically dabbing at the enormous canvas in front of him with a damp cloth. 

“What’ve you done now?” Smalls asks, scowling as he elbows Buttons right off Jack’s sofa and plops down in his place. Buttons aims a well placed kick at Smalls’ knee in retaliation, leading to an all out war. 

Without even looking up, Jack snaps his fingers and points at them. He waits until they’ve both settled down, looking like kicked puppies, the both of them, before he answers Smalls’ really quite valid question. 

“Fucked up the fuckin’ paintin’.” He grumbles.

“‘S it for Kath?” Buttons chimes in, intentionally kneeling on Smalls’ foot as he goes to lie down on the floor. 

By this point, it doesn’t even faze Davey. At first he’d thought that the newsies might be slightly more well-behaved outside of the lodgehouse, but it turns out that Jack’s place is viewed, by most of them, as merely an extension of the lodgehouse. Really, Davey knows that Jack has brought all this on himself, as there’s reliably at least one boy or another who is sleeping on Jack’s sofa on any given week. He’s made it known that any newsie who has hit on hard times can turn up on the doorstep and be guaranteed somewhere to stay and a hot meal. This had led to Jack’s tiny flat being just about as raucous as the lodgehouse, and half the time they end up with this – where Jack asks Davey to have dinner with him and Crutchie and then half of Manhattan turns up to join in. 

“Nah,” Jack waves his hand at Buttons, finally picking up his paintbrush again, “her father.” 

At those words, Race almost drops his precious cigar right out the window, wheeling round to glare at Jack. “You’s doin’ a paintin’ for fuckin’ Pulitzer?” He spits. Jack just grunts in response. “The hell you’s doin’ that for, Jackie?” 

“Kath asked me to.” Jack says, as if it’s a perfectly normal occurrence. However, as he continues, his words hold a little more malice. “‘Pparently he wants somethin’ for the house an’ is tryin’ to make amends.” 

“For settin’ the Delanceys on you? Yeah, some amends that is.” Crutchie says. Jack looks up at his friend and meets Crutchie’s furious gaze. _So, that could be a problem._

“‘S what I said.” He stares Crutchie down, seeing the younger boy’s fists clench. “Crutchie, I can handle mysel’.”

“Can you? ‘Cause-“ Crutchie fumes, until Davey’s level voice cuts him off. 

“Why are you doin’ it?” The newsies’ heads all turn to the quietest member of their group, half-forgotten amidst the chaos, and Jack turns his eyes to Davey. 

“‘F I wants to marry her, I’s got to at least try to get along wi’ him.” Jack shrugs, looking down and persisting in his painting despite all of the pairs of eyes focused on him. 

“You’re real serious about marryin’ her, huh?” Davey asks, quiet, and Crutchie’s anger visibly falls away. 

Jack looks up again. “Yeah, I am.” 


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please enjoy this obscenely long chapter. Comments absolutely make my day :) xx

The Pulitzer Christmas Party comes around faster than expected. Jack gets there on time in his rented dinner suit, tugging at the starched collar, and is quickly informed that it is usual to be fashionably late to these sorts of things. He feels like an idiot, but Katherine doesn’t seem to mind. She kisses him on the doorstep for just a few seconds longer than is strictly appropriate and then leads him inside. Jack can’t help but wink at Greaves as he walks past. 

He isn’t quite sure what he’s expecting to see, when he walks into the Pulitzer’s dining room, the table of which has been pushed to one side to leave room for mingling, but it certainly isn’t his painting, hung above the fireplace at the opposite end of the room in a fucking frame. 

“Did you…” Jack trails off, stopping stock still barely three steps into the room and turning to Katherine. 

“Not until he put it up.” Katherine smiles, pressing her lips together in glee and taking his hand to tug him over to examine it more closely. “But doesn’t it look good?” 

Katherine brings them over to stand right underneath it, looking proud of him in a way that Jack can hardly stand. He’s been trying to pacify Pulitzer, sure, extend some sort of olive branch by agreeing to this hare-brained commission, but this is just ridiculous. It looks as if it should have been painted by Monet or something, in that ornate gold frame. It doesn’t look like it’s his. 

It looks… well, it looks good. So good, in fact, that Jack finds himself wondering if it’s actually his. The low angle of the scene, designed to make the building it features all the more imposing, is exacerbated by their position directly in front of and below the piece. Above them, the New York World Building rises, delicately scaled, casting the rest of the city into shadow as it rises into a sky set afire in the colours of evening. It’s striking, certainly. Powerful. Pulitzer didn’t want pretty and Jack was just fine with that. Still, it’s there, so real before his eyes that Jack almost feels as if he too is stood in its shadow. 

Jack feels bile rise in his throat. What was he thinking? He doesn’t belong here. He can wear a dinner suit all he likes and hold the hand of the prettiest heiress in New York, but he isn’t fooling anyone. There’s something about him, in the way he holds his shoulders or the broadness of his accent, that they can all see, all these rich toffs. Like the grime of street life is lurking just under his skin, tinging him green in a way that’s only visible under the refracted light of the enormous chandelier. 

“Yeah, but… I ain’t…” He mumbles, trying very hard to keep looking at the painting – his painting – and not turn around and sprint straight out of the door. 

“Jack.” Katherine’s voice brings him crashing straight back down and he forces himself to look round and meet her eyes. 

She’s closer to his height, in these higher heels of hers, and she’s wearing something on her skin that makes it seem to glow softly, to shimmer, as if someone has lit a lamp inside of her. With a sickening twist of his gut, Jack realises that this is Katherine. This is what she’s supposed to look like, what she's supposed to be. It’s just that she can’t, not with him. How could she, when he covers her skin with streaks of paint and ink and dirt? He doesn’t mean to. Dirt just sticks to him. Or maybe he exudes it. Maybe if you cut him open, he’d bleed it out. For the first time ever, Jack thinks that that Romeo fella might have been onto something. _If I profane with my unworthiest hand,_ and all that shit. _Unworthy._ Yeah, that’s him alright. 

“If it wasn’t stunning, it wouldn’t be up.” Katherine frowns, placing her other hand on his arm despite still holding his hand. Jack can’t fathom why she’s voluntarily touching him, but he isn’t going to ask her to stop. If he’s living on borrowed time, then he might as well grab ahold of every second. “Come on." She coaxes. "Do you want a drink?” 

“I think I need one after that.” Jack replies, low and gruff, turning away from his painting. 

Jack isn’t entirely sure how Katherine manages to summon one of the men in the penguin suits holding trays of slender glasses containing golden liquid, but she seems to manage it without ever taking either of her hands from where they rest on him. The room is starting to fill, guests in long shimmering dresses and perfectly tailored suits gliding around to clink their delicate glasses together with high, tinkling laughs. From the burgeoning crowd, a waiter emerges, travelling toward them with a tray and offering them a glass. Katherine takes two and hands one to him, thanking the waiter, who merely inclines his head. The flute is made of intricately twisted glass, with a stem so thin Jack worries that his clumsy, work-hardened fingers might just snap it in two. 

He watches Katherine lift her flute to her mouth and sip, trying to ignore the way that looking at her lips makes him want to catch her up in his arms, and thus discerns this is a drink for sipping, not gulping. Jack tries to do it too, obediently lifting the glass to his lips with all the gentleness he can muster, and takes a sip. He has to try very, very hard not to spit it straight back out. It tastes fruity in a way he isn’t expecting, cloyingly so, and it fizzes strangely on his tongue in a way he’s only ever felt with seltzer water, never with alcohol. 

He's clearly making some sort of face, because Katherine starts giggling. He shoots her a look in response, but he can’t even pretend to be mad at her - her humour is infectious. Luckily for Jack’s ego, Constance marches up to him, Edith in tow, as ever, before Katherine has a chance to make any sort of comment. 

“Hello, Mr. Kelly.” Constance says. Jack has to bite his lip not to laugh at the formality of this tiny girl. 

“Well, hey, Constance, how y’doin’?” He smiles down at her and she looks up at him, bright and hopeful. She’ll grow up to be like Katherine, he thinks. She’s got that same energy about her, a childlike wonder for everything and everyone, a curiosity that’s insatiable. 

Edith, beside her sister in a pink confection of ruffles and gilt thread, wrinkles her nose. “You’re supposed to address her as _Miss Constance_. Don’t you have any sense of etiquette?”

Jack knows they’re just kids – Edith is, what, thirteen? – but it still stings, serving to remind him that this is not his world. He wonders how someone like Katherine could have come from a world like this. Sure, this is her place, she looks the part, but Jack is well-versed in the sincerity of Katherine’s looks and smiles and quiet touches, and all of these seem forced, somehow. Perhaps she’s enjoying forcing them – she must, surely, because if he looks over to his right then what he’s heard referred to as ‘nibbles’ are enough to feed the entire gang of Manhattan newsies for a week – but they still don’t seem quite Katherine. 

“You clearly don’t.” The main focus of his thoughts snaps at her sister. “The worst breach of etiquette is to point out somebody else’s bad manners, Edith, you know that.” 

_Bad manners._ Jack knows, of course, that she’s trying to defend him, but damnit if it doesn’t hurt. In the background, a string quartet strikes up a slow, ponderous waltz, couples slowly edging out of their assigned social circles to move their feet in time with the music. He wonders whether they think about the fact that they’re walking in tracks already laid out for them. He wonders if they care. Katherine and he seem to be the only ones who’ve derailed themselves from the plan that’s been set out for them. Perhaps this is the price they have to pay. 

“I’s real sorry, Miss Constance. I didn’t realise it was bad manners.” Jack apologises. 

“That’s okay.” Constance shrugs. Jack hopes that she never loses that, her forgiveness. His got beaten out of him a long, long time ago. He supposes these high society people had theirs beaten out of them too, though less literally, through years of constant scrutiny. Wouldn’t it just be so much easier if everybody wasn’t watching them, waiting for them to screw up, quick to pass judgement but slow to forgive what they deem as impropriety? “You’re my friend anyway, so you can call me by my name and that’s alright. Like how Katherine calls you Jack.” She tilts her head to the side. “Can I call you Jack too?”

“Well, sure you can.” Jack smiles down at her. Things like that, from a kid, feel like having a medal pinned on his chest. 

“Well, if isn’t Jack Kelly!” 

Upon hearing the words, Jack stands and turns around to be faced with one person he certainly wasn’t expecting to see. 

“Darcy.” He tries to keep the surprise out of his voice, allowing a grin to spread across his face as he extends a hand. “Good to see you.”

Darcy shakes Jack’s hand in return, a nice handshake, firm. Jack appreciates a good handshake. He’s liked Darcy ever since he met him that night in the basement of the New York World. Sure, the guy was pretty typical rich kid – completely out of touch – but Jack can’t fault him, all the same. 

“I hardly recognise you when you’re not out for blood.” Darcy laughs. “What are you doing here? Last I checked you and Mr. Pulizter weren’t on the best of terms.”

“We’s workin’ on it.” Jack shrugs. 

“What Jack means is that he’s trying to butter up his eventual in-laws.” Katherine cuts in, nudging him gently, affectionately, in a way that makes Darcy narrow his eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses. 

Those words make Jack feel mildly ill. It’s one thing to tell Davey that he’s going to marry Katherine and stack up dollar bills under his mattress for a ring. It’s another thing entirely to think about having old Joe Pulitzer as a father-in-law. 

Jack has never imagined himself as someone who has folks. Sure, he has his boys, his brothers. But parental figures? That’s never been something Jack has gone in for. Medda has been about as close as he’s come and he’s kept even her at arm’s length, at the level of a sort of indulgent aunt. See, if you let people become that for you, they just turn around and spit in your eye. Or worse. 

Jack’s memories of his father are pretty fuzzy, now, vague shapes and smells and tastes that form an outline of a man he barely even recognises. He’d been a hard man, Jack’s father, right until the end when he got crumpled up and tossed to the curb. Jack remembers him like that, all hard edges. Even his father’s corpse had been like that, like chipped away stone. Even eight-year-old eyes had seen that. Jack’s grateful to his dad for the beatings, don’t think he’s not. He’d been a hard man, but a hard worker, and he’d taught Jack what he needed to survive. Two words – _don’t starve_ – each one now memorialised in puckered scars across his back. And Jack’s been pretty good at not starving, mostly. He knows his father wouldn’t be proud, but Jack hopes that he might approve.

But the idea of having folks? Of having the Pulitzers as folks? Now that’s a whole other ball game. _Eventual in-laws_. It’s enough to make him want to be sick. But then he directs his attention to Katherine. Beautiful, smart, independent, kind, talented, perfect, _his_. Maybe he could deal with folks. Maybe, if that meant Katherine could be his and he could be hers. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all. 

“You are-“ Darcy starts, looking between them as Katherine takes Jack’s hand and leans her head on his shoulder. He looks like he doesn’t quite know what exactly to do with this information. “I see.” Darcy nods tightly. There’s a pause before he manages to muster the lightness to speak again. “Well, I must admit I thought you’d been a bit distant, Katherine, but I thought it was down to your work for the Sun.”

“Definitely that as well,” Katherine laughs, completely oblivious to the fact that Darcy is looking at her like she’s the sun in a way that is making Jack start to rethink exactly how much he likes the guy, “but getting Jack out of scrapes has become my full-time job, it seems.”

“Do you find yourself in many scrapes, Mr. Kelly?” Darcy asks, turning to Jack. Despite the man being smaller than him – Jack still hasn’t quite managed to turn off his constant assessments of a person’s threat level, no matter how much time he spends in polite society – the words feel vaguely menacing in a way which such a flippant comment surely shouldn’t.

“Me? Never.” Jack scoffs, trying not to turn around and run out the door at the intensity of it all, the people and the drinks and his painting on the bloody wall. 

“Liar.” Katherine grins, elbowing him. Jack manages to grin back at her. _This is Katherine’s night. Keep it together, Kelly._

“I’m afraid I passed this way with the intention of asking Katherine to dance – may I steal her from you, Mr. Kelly?” Darcy offers him another smile, tighter this time. _Oh, I bet you’d like to steal her, wouldn’t you?_

“‘Course.” Jacks nods his affirmation, detangling his fingers from Katherine’s so that she can take Darcy’s arm out into the centre of the room. 

The way that Darcy is looking at Katherine makes Jack feel angry and lonely and, though he knows that every other person at the party is far too caught up in their own selves and their own lives, he can’t help but feel that they’re all looking at him, watching him, waiting for him to slip up. The weight of their imagined gazes makes him feel hot and uncomfortable. Jack tugs at the starched collar of his shirt, trying to ignore the prickling feeling under his skin that’s spreading out from his arms and across his chest. 

“Jack?” He looks down to see Constance once again stood beside him. “You don’t look very well.”

 _Yeah, you don’t say._ “Yeah, Constance. I think I might need some air.” 

“Come with me, I’ll show you how to get to the garden.” The girl says, taking hold of his hand and leading him out of the dining room and toward the back door like it’s the easiest thing in the entire world. 

…

“It’s been too long.” Katherine remarks, moving through the turn with ease and stepping back into Darcy’s hold. 

He’s always been a fantastic dancer; they’d learned together as children. Katherine has many fond memories of her clumsy steps and his hisses of pain as they practiced across the nursery floor. Darcy never complained though, not even aged nine. He just told her she was improving. 

“It has.” Darcy replies, his mouth pressed into a thin line. It’s not like him, this stoic taciturnity. 

For one searing moment, Katherine wishes that she’s dancing with Jack instead. She won’t ask him, of course, not tonight. Mostly because it’s not her place, as the woman, though she hardly thinks Jack minds when she takes control, but because she knows that he’d hate it. He’s already feeling like he’s under a microscope, she can tell, she isn’t going to pile this on top for him, as much as she wouldn’t mind being pressed up against his strong chest and listening to his snarky comments about the pretentious party guests right about now. She just misses the ease of it, the fact that she doesn’t have to maintain any sort of high society façade around Jack. With him, she can relax. She ought to be able to, with Darcy, but she knows that if she did let her guard down she’d only disappoint him. As much as he indulges her quirks, she knows that he disapproves of her career, her outspokenness. He’s old-fashioned, in that way. 

“Is something bothering you?” Katherine asks, half absent as she rises on her toes and glances over his shoulder to where Jack is standing in the corner of the dining room, now speaking to her little sister once again.

It’s something that has never come naturally to Katherine, the ability to charm children. Older children like her, those in their later teens, but not young children. She envies Jack for that as much as she admires him for it, for whatever it is that hangs in the air about him that brings children flocking to feel the warmth of his attention and affection. She feels like one of those children, sometimes. Like he’s difficult to reach, giving his affection away so freely in ruffles of hair and kind words, but refusing to take it in return. Still, she can’t help but think about what a wonderful father he’ll make. 

“No. Not at all.” Katherine isn’t fooled. 

“Darcy?” She pushes, even as he guides her through another smooth turn.

“It’s not my place to say.” He bites out.

“Darcy, we’re friends.” Katherine frowns. “You can tell me anything.”

Darcy lets out a heavy breath that reminds Katherine strangely of a tired carriage horse. He looks exhausted in a way that, honestly, Katherine resents him for just slightly. She’s seen Jack working so much that he gets less than three hours sleep a night. Darcy, as a wealthy firstborn, has no right to be exhausted.

“A _newsboy_ , Katherine?” He finally huffs out.

Her reaction borders on visceral to such criticisms. Katherine had thought it would be easier, that she would get used to the pointed looks, the whispers when she enters a room, the derisive comments, but it hasn’t got easier at all. She’s just learned to ignore the people who make them. But Darcy? He’s known her since she was two and quite clearly had his sights set on marrying her since he was ten. Surely he ought to trust her judgement. He always used to.

“Oh, not you as well, Darcy.” Katherine rolls her eyes, trying to deflect his comment, let him know that he ought to drop the issue, even as he dips her back a little. “Don’t be such a snob.”

“I’m serious, Katherine.” Darcy replies. He’s not even looking at her now, but has his eyes fixed over her shoulder at where she just knows that Jack is standing. “Can he even read the articles you write? Just look at him.”

“Darcy, don’t push it.” She bites out, tensing her core muscles as Darcy’s hand returns to her waist in the dance hold.

“You have plenty of wonderful prospects-“

“What, like you, you mean?” 

“You know that isn’t what I meant.” Darcy frowns at her in a way that makes Katherine certain that it was exactly what he meant. 

As they turn once more, Katherine’s eyes land on where Jack should be, but he’s gone this time. She tries to stop her stomach from falling into the sickening lurch it attempts when she realises this – he’s probably just been commandeered by Constance, or gone to get another drink. It’s highly unlikely that her father has done anything. Somehow, she doesn’t quite believe herself. They continue to turn and Katherine spots Cornelia over Darcy’s shoulder. She’s simpering behind her fan with one eye on them as they turn slowly around the dance floor. Katherine makes a mental note to avoid her at all costs. She can't deal with that tonight.

“You know what, Darcy?” She says, her tone caustic. “Cornelia’s over there. I’m sure she’ll make a wonderful prospect for you.”

“Cornelia Archer?” Darcy frowns, craning his neck to stare confusedly at the woman in question.

“Oh, haven’t you heard?” Katherine replies. It comes out rather more nastily than she truly intends, but she finds she doesn’t feel very sorry about it. “She’s been fawning over you for months. Such a _shame_ it’s not reciprocated – you’ll have such fun when you eventually figure out a courtship that’s agreeable to both parties.”

“Oh, I’m sure your courtship with Mr. Kelly is quite _agreeable_.” Darcy responds, sucking in a breath through his teeth. The words are polite, but they sound like an insult. 

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.” Katherine replies, meeting Darcy’s eyes in defiance and setting her jaw. 

“Come off it, Katherine, half of Manhattan has seen you carrying on with him all over the city. If you don’t do something soon, it’ll be too late for even an exceptional suitor to salvage your reputation.” Katherine wants very much to slap him. It must be written across her face because Darcy softens, just a little, into exasperation rather than frustration. “Katherine, I am trying to help you-“

“I am fed up with people trying to help me. If I want help, then I shall ask for it.”

Katherine drops her frame and turns away, leaving Darcy stood, limp, on the edge of the dance floor like a puppet with its strings cut. He’s staring after her, she knows this, and it’s the only thing that keeps her walking steady until she gets out into the corridor. At which point, she hoists up her skirts and sets off toward the back door at a pace that’s frankly impressive considering the height of her heels. 

Her heart is pounding and it’s not from the dancing. She can’t let Jack run, not again. Last time he left her house, it ended with him walking away from her. She can’t let him do that. She doesn’t think she’ll survive it this time. So, she heads for the back door, ready to run out and round to the front and, hopefully, catch him before he does something unbelievably stupid.

But as she bursts out of the door, she hits something very firm and warm, which turns out to be Jack. 

“Whoa!” Jack reaches out and catches her, his hands on her arms to steady her, as her connection with his side threatens to send her tumbling over. “Careful, sweetheart.” 

“You’re here.” Katherine breathes, looking up at him. Jack frowns down at her in confusion, his brows knitting together. Her hands have somehow found their way to being fisted in his lapels, though she’s not quite sure how they got there. She doesn’t let go, though, because she thinks if she does then he might just fade away. Her gaze does harden though, into something like anger, as her heartrate slows. “What are you doing out here? I’m trying to help you make a good impression on my family and you’re out here doing nothing?” It comes out far harsher than she intends and she immediately regrets it.

“‘S bit much, in there.” Jack shrugs, his expression hardening at her tone. “Constance offered to show me the garden.”

Katherine squeezes her eyes closed, biting her lip. Why do they have to keep doing this? Finally, she turns to her sister, who is currently perched on the low wall between the porch and the garden. She’s embarrassed to admit that she hasn’t even noticed Constance, not with Jack there. 

“Constance, would you give us a moment, please?” 

“Why?” The small girl frowns, looking vaguely irritated that her time with her new best friend has been cut short. 

“I need to speak to Jack.” Katherine snaps. She can’t deal with this, not today. “Alone.” Constance huffs, but slopes back inside without verbal complaint. 

Jack, now confident that Katherine isn’t imminently about to topple over, eases himself away from her and turns away, bracing his hands on the recently vacated wall. The Pulitzer’s garden isn’t large, it’s New York, after all, but it’s still as ostentatious as the rest of the place, with a neatly trimmed lawn and a specially lit fountain in the centre. Jack watches the water, rubbing a tired hand over his face. 

“Why did you invite me tonight, Katherine?” He sounds exhausted. 

“What are you talking about?” Katherine asks. Her own nervousness makes her tone harsh and she has to make a conscious effort to soften it. “My father invited you.”

“Why’d he invite me then? ‘Cause I sure as hell don’t belong here.” Jack laughs, humourless. 

“Of course, you do, you were doing great.” 

“Until even a thirteen-year-old calls me out on my bad manners?” Jack asks, pushing off the wall and turning around to face her, heedless of the increasing volume of his voice. “Or ‘til I drinks some stupid drink wrong an’ nearly end up wi’ bubbles comin’ outta my nose? Or ‘til I can’t do these fancy dances an’ some other guy ends up whiskin’ you away?”

“Are you jealous of Darcy?” _He’s such a **boy**. That’s what’s bothering him, seriously?_ “That’s what this is about?”

“No! Sorta, I dunno.” Jack sighs, rubbing his hand over his face and then pinching the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut as if he’s in pain. He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t jealous, because he is. He’s jealous, not because he doesn’t trust Katherine but because Darcy is everything he will never be. “‘S like they can smell it on me.” He drops his hands, clenching them into fists at his sides. “The fact that I’s not one o’ them. I tries so hard, Ace, to not let you down, an’ it ain’t never good enough an’ I don’t-“ He stops. Breathes. Softens. “You belongs here, Kath, you’s glowin’. Every guy in that room has his eye on you. An’ I’s jus’ some piece o’ furniture shoved into the corner. What’m I s’posed to do?”

His eyes open again. Jack has eyes that feel like September, warm and regretful. They very nearly break Katherine’s heart. 

“I don’t know why my father invited you here, but I’m glad he did.” She says, slowly. “You’re the only thing that’s making this party bearable.”

Jack frowns. He doesn’t understand. “You looked like you was havin’ a good time?”

“I’m a Pulitzer. We act.”

The words are truer than Katherine would like. Why does this have to be her? How, after all of this, after everything she’s done, is she still defined by her surname? A name that feels, after everything, like it isn’t even hers. 

“You… you don’t like this crap either?” Jack asks. He asks it like it’s news to him, like it isn’t obvious. 

“Are you kidding?” Katherine laughs, but there’s no humour in it. “I hate it. I’d much rather be at the lodgehouse playing poker with you and the boys. This… this performance, it’s painful.”

It surprises even her how true the words are. This time last year, she had sat out here after being shot down by editor after editor, patronised by the friends of her father, and wondered if she would ever feel at home. That Katherine could never have imagined what her home would feel like now. But that Katherine, she supposes, wasn’t ready for this. She couldn’t have seen past the lack of scented soaps and serving staff to see her boys for what they really are. Funny. Loyal. Caring. And Jack? Well, she’d just have seen a pretty face. 

“Darcy thinks ‘m not good enough for you.” Jack says, quiet and bitter. Saying it tastes like the time he stole an apple and bit into it, only for it to be a baking apple. 

“Darcy’s wrong.” She states it like it’s a fact. Jack isn’t so sure.

“Is he?” Jack asks, shaking his head. “He wants you, Kath.”

“Well, he can’t have me.” Katherine replies, firm, steeling herself and taking a step forward so that she can almost touch him. “I’ve got you Jack.” She says, meeting his eyes. “I don’t need him. I don’t want him.”

Jack doesn’t know quite what to do with himself. It feels like when he was fifteen and Sally Robins kissed him in the alley by the dockyard, all fluttering hands and flushed cheeks, except times one thousand. He doesn’t know how she still does this to him, that just by saying words – her and her damn words – she can change everything, wipe away the white marks on the chalkboard. 

“You know when I said I’s pretty scared o’ you?” He breathes, unable to look away. 

“I recall.” A small smile tugs at the corners of her mouth, painted pink in the reflection of her dressing table earlier that night, thinking of him. 

“I don’t think I am no more. I’s just scared o’ losin’ you.” 

It feels like a weight off his chest, just saying it, but it doesn’t last long – like someone took off a dumbbell and replaced it with an anvil. Jack can’t believe how fucking weak he is. He’s never been able to keep people at arm’s length and it’s come around to bite him more times than he can count. What’s wrong with him? How is it that he wants to hold onto these people so badly and he keeps losing them anyway? 

“I’m scared of losing you too.”

The words aren’t what he expected. “Y’are?”

“Jack.” Katherine shakes her head at him, tiny droplets of water clinging to her eyelashes that make him feel like the devil himself. “Why do you think I’m out here? I thought-“

“You thought I was leavin’ again.” Jack realises aloud. He looks stricken. “Ace, I didn’t-“

“I know.” She looks up, assuring him. “I just- I wake up every day terrified that you’re going to have to cleared off on the next train to Santa Fe. Do you know what it did to me, when I thought you were going to die? How it makes me feel when starve yourself, or throw yourself in harm’s way? I’ve known you for six months, Jack, and I don’t think I could live without you and that’s terrifying.” 

She looks at him. Katherine wasn’t quite expecting to say all that, but it’s out there now, like the final submitted draft of an article, and she can’t do anything other than wait for his response. She sounds desperate, pathetic, and she convinces herself in the three whole seconds that Jack stands before her, thinking, that this is it for them, that this is the last straw, that he’s leaving. 

“What will it take to convince you I ain’t leavin’?” He asks.

Katherine can see it in the way that he’s looking at her, rumpled and warm and everything she’s not supposed to be, inelegant but graceful somehow in it, and knows that he means it. That he’s not leaving. _Right by your side._ It takes everything in her to reach up and cup his cheek, a little gesture, negligible, considering the brazen affection which he touches her with, but it’s all that she can do to convince herself that he’s here and he’s hers. 

“Look after yourself. You already look after me so well.”

He doesn’t believe her, but he nods anyway.

…

Jack doesn’t speak to Joseph Pulitzer, except a quick thank you when he shakes the man’s hand at the end of the night, and that’s just fine with him. He and Katherine make the rounds of the rest of the party, where he dutifully shakes hands and mingles and watches with something like awe as Katherine remembers people’s names and asks about their children and makes jokes that he doesn’t understand. He sees the fascinated derision too, in people’s faces, even after Katherine tells them that he is responsible for the painting over the fireplace and he’s buried a nervous hand in his hair. He recognises, at least, that she’s not boasting about him to look good in front of these friends, but because she’s proud of him. 

It’s weird, having somebody be proud of him. He doesn’t think it’s ever happened before. 


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack is a teenage boy and he acts like one. That’s literally it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not hugely happy with my writing in this, but oh well. I swear that there is actual plot and character development lurking here somewhere. Comments make me very happy :)

If Joseph Pulitzer had thought that hosting his Christmas party on Christmas Eve was a good idea, then he was sadly mistaken. That, at least, is Jack’s opinion as he finally flops into bed in the early hours of the 25th of December. 

He’d only escaped the party at almost midnight, kissing Katherine at the door and promising that he would see her soon because the face she’d been wearing when she thought he’d left had him kicking himself all the way back to his apartment for ever giving her any reason to doubt him. But there’s no rest for the wicked, of course there isn’t, and Jack had to yank out the sack of presents from under his bed and go and play at being jolly old St. Nick at the lodgehouse.

He’s done it before, sort of, managed to scrape together bits and pieces to leave at the end of the boys’ beds each year, even in the hard years. The past couple of Christmases, kids like Crutchie and Race have figured out that it isn’t real and that's made it easier. But then Carl came along last year and wrecked Jack’s whole system – crying on Christmas morning because he couldn’t understand why Santa didn’t bring presents like he did when his parents were alive. Jack had never realised how extravagant Santa was, with some folks. Apparently, Carl’s parents, before they caught the consumption, had been pretty happy for Santa to take credit for several toys. Jack had cursed them for spoiling their kid, but he’d cursed himself more. How was he supposed to know how to do this shit? It’s not like Santa had ever left anything at the foot of his bed. 

This year, though, it’s going to be different. Jack has spent weeks getting everything together and sorting out a present, a proper one, for each boy. He’s managed to do the toys for the younger ones on the cheap, taking scrap pieces of wood from set-building at the Bowery and carving them into tiny trains or motorcars or boats with his pocketknife and painting them up real nice so that his poor carving skills aren’t so obvious. Add in a quarter bag of rhubarb and custards and Jack reckons all the little ones will be pretty pleased. As for the older ones, he’s tried a little harder. Coats, gloves, scarves – they’ve all got something that’s going to keep them warm. He thanks his lucky stars that all of his boys sleep like the dead when they aren’t having nightmares – he’s pretty sure that it’s going to be a surprise when they wake up to all of their presents. Wrapped, no less, which is one thing he’d never done before. 

Personally, Jack thinks wrapping paper is a complete and utter waste of money, but Katherine had insisted, _because it makes it more exciting, Jack,_ and who is he to say no. Especially since most of the wrapping paper she bought to use for the presents ended up crumpled after she pinned him on top of it and kissed him in a way that made him think he’d died and gone to heaven. 

He falls asleep thinking about what the boys will say when they open their presents.

…

It’s his own name that wakes Jack on Christmas morning. The weather is frigid, ice on the inside of the windowpane in this fire-less room, and he desperately, desperately wants to go back to sleep. But someone is saying his name and he’s pretty sure it’s Crutchie and what if Crutchie needs help – _shit_. 

“Jack!” The boy in question sits bolt upright in bed, casting around for the source of the noise, praying that it’s nothing serious. Crutchie is leaning against the door frame, his face lit up in a bright, wide smile, but Jack’s still ready to launch himself right out of bed when his friend continues. “It’s Christmas!”

 _Seriously?_ Jack collapses back against his pillows, flinging one arm over his eyes. “Yeah, an’ I’s tired, so sod back off to bed, wouldja.”

“Oh, c’mon Jack, where’s your festive spirit?” Crutchie grins, hobbling across the floorboards to the bed. 

“‘S buried somewhere wi’ all the fucks I give.” 

Crutchie gives Jack the only truly appropriate response to a statement like that and yanks the blanket straight off him. “‘F you want to actually give the boys the dinner you bought ‘em, you needs to get outta bed.”

Jack, in between shivers, thinks about the enormous turkey and the piles of vegetables currently sat on their kitchen table. He may have gone slightly overboard, but, in his defence, neither him nor the other boys have ever had a proper Christmas dinner and he can afford it now. He wants to do it right. And if that means it takes two trips to get it all over to the lodgehouse, then so be it. 

Grumbling, he rolls over and fumbles around under the bed, producing a plain white envelope which he hands to Crutchie, before getting up and starting to get dressed, goosepimples rising on his arms. The ice on the window has spread its tendrils into every corner of the pane like winter's grasping, groping hands, but Jack has done more than one winter with ice forming on his skin, not just glass. He tells himself that he’s not even that cold, and he damn near believes it. 

“What’s this?” Crutchie asks, even as he turns it over and breaks the seal on it.

“What’s it look like? ‘S your Christmas present, you idiot.” Jack mumbles, tugging his undershirt on over his head and emerging from it looking even more unkempt, if it’s possible.

“But you pay for our house, Jack.” Crutchie looks at him with narrowed eyes, ever the voice of reason, his thumb frozen, ready to make the final tear in the envelope. 

“That ain’t exactly a Christmas present.” Jack replies, now fiddling with the buttons of his shirt. When Crutchie fails to respond, he turns around and waves a hand in the direction of the envelope. “Well, ain’t you gonna open it?”

With a final suspicious look, Crutchie jerks his thumb forwards and tears open the final section of the envelope. Inside, on thick, scratchy paper, are lots and lots of words. Crutchie’s a better reader than Jack (which Jack stubbornly maintains is because Crutchie had parents who sent him to school before they died, and not because Crutchie is cleverer than him, even though he knows the latter is true) but it still takes him a moment to decipher it.

“It’s a contract?” Crutchie looks up, confused. 

“An apprenticeship.” Jack nods in affirmation. “Dollar fifty a day for a year, plus a job at the end o’ it, if you’s any good. You starts in January.” 

Jack barely finishes his sentence before Crutchie launches himself straight over the bed and wraps his arms around Jack. Honestly, with his arms pinned to his sides and his shirt only half buttoned, Jack isn’t totally sure what to do. 

“Hey, kid, I’s only half-dressed, get off o’ me.” Jack says gruffly, extracting an arm and swiping a hand under his nose.

When he pulls back from Jack, Crutchie is still grinning, wide-eyed and hopeful and it takes Jack back almost a decade to the kid who looked at him that same way the first time they sold papes together. Jack’s used to being the brother, the guy that people look up to, he’s just never been quite sure if he deserves it before. 

“I got you somethin’, too.” _Well, fuck._

“Crutchie-“ Jack starts, but is met with an envelope eerily similar to the one he’d given Crutchie being shoved in his face. 

“Here.” Crutchie says, looking very pleased with himself when Jack takes it, despite the dark look that Jack shoots him.

The envelope, it turns out, contains a small business card with a receipt scribbled on the back. Jack has to squint to make out the words written in fine black ink on the textured card, but he’s pretty sure just to have a business card like this whatever it is must be pretty important.

“Credit note?” He finally manages to make out within the scrawl on the back. 

“I knew you wouldn’t take it if it was for you, an’ I knew you wouldn’t take my money, so I paid them at the jewellers on 34th street.” Crutchie smiles. “‘Pparently if you takes this in, they’s gonna put seven dollars toward a ring. Sorta a present for Kath, really, but you’s been savin’ real hard for this ring, so-”

“Seven dollars, Crutchie? I can’t take this.” Jack nearly chokes. Seven dollars? It must have taken Crutchie months to save up that amount, even with Jack paying all of the rent. Just holding the card feels like a betrayal, so he thrusts it back toward Crutchie, but the other boy shifts back across the mattress, shaking his head and reaching out for his crutch. 

“You won’t lemme pay rent, Jack, take the damn credit note.”

Jack looks dumbly between the card and his friend – no, his brother – knowing with absolute certainty that there’s no way that Crutchie is going to allow him to wriggle out of this one. Resigned, he tucks the card under the mattress. Maybe he can start sneaking extra food into Crutchie’s cupboard to try and pay him back. In the meantime, however, he wanders over and slings an arm around the smaller boy’s shoulders, tugging him into a side hug and guiding them toward to the kitchen.

“C’mon,” Jack says, clearing the lump from his throat, “let’s see ‘bout gettin’ this food over to the lodgehouse. I reckon the turkey weighs more than you.” 

…

It turns out that they do, in fact, manage to get all of the food over to the lodgehouse without doing two trips, however the operation does involve hanging a frankly worrying number of bags on Crutchie’s crutch. They also manage to get most of it into the kitchen before the boys get wind that Jack is visiting and one of the younger boys, Peter, throws himself into Jack’s arms, causing a shower of raw brussels sprouts to rain down over the entire kitchen.

“Jack! Santa came!” Peter exclaims, throwing his arms around Jack’s neck. Behind them, Crutchie grumbles about mess as he attempts to gather up the scattered sprouts. 

“No way!” Jack grins, turning and setting Peter down so that he’s sat on the sideboard. His ribs are fine, now, mostly, but having an eight-year-old jump on him like some sort of human missile still isn’t exactly desirable for him. “Lemme think – did he bring you coal? You’s surely on the naughty list.”

“I ain’t!” Peter looks highly offended and produces a blue-painted wooden train from his trouser pocket, holding it out with great pride. “He brung me a train, see. An’ some sweets!”

“Jack!” Before he can reply to Peter (which really doesn’t matter, as Peter is at the kind of age where replies aren’t really necessary to his conversational abilities and therefore slides off the sideboard, chugging away without complaint), Jack turns around to see Race standing in the doorway, smiling and wrapped in a new fleece jacket. It's cleaner than anything Jack's ever seen the kid wear. 

“Hey, Race.” He says, yanking open the door of the oven section of the ancient range cooker, ready to transfer the enormous turkey into it. “Gimme a hand wi’ this, wouldja?”

“I ain’t never seen so much food in my life.” Race says, obliging and wandering over to lift the turkey into the oven on Jack’s count.

“Yeah, well, I don’t think there’s gonna be no leftovers,” Jack replies, shutting the door and dusting off his hands, “but you can have ‘em if there is.”

Race looks over at Jack. “The coat’s real nice, Jack. Thanks.”

“Oh, Santa brought you a coat, did he?” Jack raises an eyebrow. 

“Shut it.” Race elbows him, then wraps an arm around the taller boy’s shoulders. “I’s real glad you’s back.” 

“Shuddup.” Jack looks down at him. The words are harsh, but Jack doesn’t shrug off Race’s arm. 

…

Jack honestly can’t remember a happier Christmas at the lodgehouse. All of the kids are either wrapped in some new item of clothing (because happy isn’t synonymous with warm in the draughty lodgehouse – if it was, newsies might be the most miserable boys in the world) or playing with some new toy and whilst Jack knows he should probably have done more, it’s nice to see them. Especially for the little ones, Santa actually turning up with something is the most magical thing that has ever happened to them. 

Once the conveyor belt of newsies chopping different kinds of vegetables and putting them in pans (because Katherine had told him something about a thing called _vitamin_ , which happens in vegetables, being important for people to eat and Jack reckons that the more vitamin he can get into his boys, the better off they’ll be) have prepared everything, they just have to wait for it to cook. The younger ones commandeer the dormitory floor to race their new toys, whilst the older ones huddle together on the beds to play a game of poker. 

Race deals out the cards – now so frayed and worn that half the time it’s nigh on impossible to tell what’s actually in a hand – so fast that his hands are almost a blur. Jack’s pretty sure that the whole reason Race always wins at poker is because he somehow cheats and covers it up with his fast dealing, but he can’t actually prove anything and it’s Christmas, so he plays along. In his absence, Race has apparently been playing the other boys for actual money, but Jack puts his foot down immediately on that count, insisting that they play, as they always used to, by wagering with matchsticks. Race looks put out, but Jack isn’t stupid. He’d lose half the deposit for his and Katherine’s future house playing that boy for real money.

Jack wonders when he started thinking about his and Katherine’s future together as an inevitability. It ought to scare him, Jack knows, the idea of tying himself to one person at just nineteen, but somehow it doesn’t. He thinks so hard about it that he loses spectacularly, but he figures that’s okay. 

Surprisingly, it takes until they’ve all eaten, his boys clustered around a table stuffing themselves silly, before the first major fight breaks out. They’re back in the dormitory playing cards again, most of them flat on their backs to cope with the stupor of eating more in this one meal, probably, than they did in the entire week leading up to Christmas, when Henry makes a comment. It’s pretty insignificant, really, something about Race spending rather more time than he ought to over in Brooklyn, and Jack’s hardly even listening until voices start getting raised and he turns around to see the two boys squaring off, Race demanding that Henry elaborate on _what, exactly, you’s implyin’_. 

Jack manages to get in between them before the first punch gets thrown and Race, despite being clearly incensed, takes a step back, never breaking eye contact with his opponent. Henry, however, is less forgiving. 

“This ain’t none o’ your business, Jack.” Henry says, pressing forward against the arm Jack has across his heaving chest.

Jack hadn’t realised quite how tall Henry had gotten since he’d left. The kid is only a couple of inches shorter than him now, even though he’s only fifteen. He’s young and he’s angry at the world and Jack remembers being like that. “‘S a fight, it’s always my business.” 

“You ain’t a newsie no more.” Jack can’t deny that Henry’s words hit him harder than a punch ever could. “Stay outta it.”

“I ain’t lettin’ you soak each other over nothin’. Cool it.” Jack drops his arm from across Henry’s chest, judging that he isn’t going to launch himself at Race when he does, and turns away.

Henry grabs Jack’s shoulder and Jack wheels around, clenching his fists, torn between beating Henry into next week and backing into a corner and hyperventilating. “You left us, Jack.” Henry spits at him, a cruel smile on his lips. “Time to stop thinkin’ you’s the leader o’ this family.” 

Jack steps forward and points a finger in Henry’s face, his voice low. He really, really wants to knock some respect into that kid. “Careful, Henry.”

“No, you’s not one of us no more. You ain’t tellin’ me to cool nothin’.”

“You tell me that when your belly ain’t full o’ my food.” Jack shoves the boy backwards, not enough to send him sprawling, just enough to let him know that he’s pushing his luck. Henry doesn’t seem to get the message, stepping right back up and into Jack’s space.

“You think you’s so tough, wi’ your fancy job an’ apartment.” Henry shoves Jack back with a snarl. “Courtin’ that Miss Pulitzer o’ yours. Is that the reason you’s rarin’ to brawl, Jack? Huh? Wouldn’t surprise me, ‘pparently you ain’t gettin’ it outta your system – we’s heard you ain’t even fucked her yet-“ 

And that’s when Jack sees red. Before he can even think about it, before he can think better of it, his fist comes up and cracks into Henry’s face with a sickening crunch. 

Jack’s no stranger to fighting. Growing up on the streets, if you don’t fight, you don’t eat. If you don’t fight, somebody’s going to soak you real bad. But it’s been a long time since he’s gone for it with one of his boys. Jack’s known as the one who breaks up the fights. Not always, because sometimes the kids need to get it out of their systems, and sometimes they need to learn how to settle a score themselves. But if it gets vicious, then he steps in. He’s pretty sure some of the younger ones haven’t ever seen him fight, though. Usually when there’s a brawl going on the rest of the boys start shouting, though none of them get involved, newsies honour and all that. But now? The dormitory is deathly quiet. 

The quiet is what snaps Jack out of it, what stops him from jumping on top of Henry, who, since Jack decked him, is now sprawled on the floor clutching his bleeding nose, and soaking him good and proper. 

“Thought you’d ha’ been above that, Jackie.” Henry pants out, when Jack doesn’t jump him and instead just stands over him, breathing heavily. “Beatin’ on kids ‘cause they’s runnin’ their mouths.”

“You ain’t ever been in the Refuge, have you, Henry?” Jack hears some of the older newsies behind him suck in a breath. Jack doesn’t talk about his time in the Refuge, apart from the select stories that they’ve all heard, like the time he escaped on the back of Governor Roosevelt’s carriage. If he’s even saying the name of that place, they all know it’s serious. “‘F you had, you wouldn’t be callin’ that a beatin’. You wants me to soak you like Synder used to? You jus’ say the word. You’s seen my scars.”

Behind them, Crutchie places a hand on Race’s chest to prevent the boy from surging forward. Newsies honour. Jack can handle himself. Clearly. Henry just looks up at Jack, silent, for a long moment. Then Jack nods, an unspoken agreement, fisting his hand in the front of Henry’s shirt and hauling the boy to his feet, giving him a gentle shove in the direction of the kitchen.

“Get him cleaned up.” Jack spits, turning round and stalking back over to the bunks where the newsies remain frozen and snatching up his hand of cards. “Where were we?”

The older boys exchange looks and silently take their hands back up, slapping cards down one after another. It takes the younger newsies a little while to figure out that it’s somehow all over, but once they do, they go back to playing with their toys as the older boys play cards.

Jack takes the time between his turns to level out his breathing, casting the occasional glance over toward the kitchen doorway. It’s been a long time since he’s lost his temper like that. There is, of course, the inevitable anxiety around what the younger newsies, the ones who haven’t seen him brawl like that before, will think, but he could have hurt Henry a lot worse. Would have done, too, probably, a few years ago. Well, there’s nothing to be done about it now. The kids can think what they like, they won’t go disrespecting Kath, or him, for that matter, in a hurry. He puts down a two of clubs. 

They don’t get very far into the card game, however, when there’s a knock on the wall outside and Katherine appears in the doorway holding a wrapped present along with a large trunk. She is, as per usual, swarmed by a crowd of small newsies all clamouring for her attention, though that comes to abrupt stop when Henry re-enters with what looks like an old sock pressed to his nose to stem the bleeding. To his credit, the boy looks mortified.

“Greet the lady, Henry.” Jack says, low and stern, from his position on one of the bunks. Kath’s eyes finally locate him within the crowded room and, despite the fact that he might as well have been the only person in the room for all that Katherine saw, there’s still a question there. What else could Jack expect; she’s a reporter. Once Henry has mumbled out a greeting and promptly scurried to the opposite end of the room, Jack clarifies. “Henry’s been needin’ some work on his manners, recently.”

“Ah.” Katherine nods, as if she understands. Jack hopes against hope that she doesn’t ask him about why Henry’s manners are bad, or why he’s got a bloody nose. He isn’t sure if he could repeat what Henry had said. The words might get stuck in his throat. They might make him sick. Jack would quite like to punch a wall. “Well, other than manners, Jack tells me that you’ve all been very good boys this year?” Katherine says, returning to the newsies congregated around her and setting down the trunk. There’s a chorus of yes, ma’am from the younger boys, a sea of little heads vigorously nodding. “Well then, I don’t know what size you all are, so you’ll have to dig around, but I’m pretty sure that there should be a new sweater in this trunk for each of you.” She says, opening it up to display stacks of brightly coloured, knitted sweaters. 

Jack could just kiss her. She hadn’t told him about this particular plan but he can tell immediately that the sweaters have been chosen for warmth and practicality. He can’t believe Katherine and her thoughtfulness. Jack has absolutely no idea how he lucked out with a girl like her, but he’s sure as hell not complaining. 

She looks up and over to him and his little group of older boys, smiling. “You lot too.”

That’s all the encouragement necessary for them all, except Jack, of course, to abandon their cards and fly over to the trunk to join in the chaos, leaving a space on the bunk for Katherine to perch once she manages to pick her way through an ocean of excited newsies.

“You’s too good.” Jack smiles at her as she sits down, leaning over to kiss her. It’s quick, he knows that she doesn’t like to endure the wolf-whistling that a longer kiss results in, but he needs something. 

“They deserve nice things.” She smiles back, extending the wrapped present towards him. “As do you.”

Jack takes the present – he’s stupid, but not stupid enough to try and refuse her – and looks at her, guilty. “My present fo’ you is back at my apartment – I thought you was with your family.”

Katherine rolls her eyes. “One more minute with them and I swear I’d have exploded. I’d much rather be here, now is just the soonest I could escape the clutches of my mother.” Jack snorts at that. She looks at him, hopeful. “Can I come back to your apartment to get it?”

“Sure,” Jack nods, suddenly feeling a whole lot less guilty and a whole lot more excited at the prospect, “I’ll walk you back after – it ain’t safe for a lady to be wanderin’ about after dark, not round there.”

“Jack, it’s fine-“ She starts, but he cuts her off. 

“It might be fine where you live, Ace, but folks ain’t so nice round here.”

She looks at him, long and hard, but he just stares back, his gaze level. Finally, she breaks the eye contact, pulling away like a finger pressed against a hot mug for just a second too long. “Okay, you can walk me back. Happy?”

“Very.” He grins, resting his chin on his hand and looking at her with a goofy, lopsided smile.

“Well, open your present.” She nods toward the squashy parcel in his hands, wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. Obediently, Jack starts to fiddle with the string, trying not laugh at the shrieks of excitement coming from the crowd of newsies on the other side of the dormitory. “You also have oil paints and canvases being delivered to your apartment next week, but this is just something small.”

Jack’s head snaps up. “Katherine-“

“It’s for your art, Jack, don’t complain.” She says, as if her arranging for him to get art supplies that he’s been lusting after for years is nothing at all, and reaches out to help him slide the string off the parcel. “Besides, this present is shockingly bad.”

 _How is she so perfect?_ Jack hopes she doesn’t see the way his fingers shake. It’s difficult for him to concentrate when she’s this close to him, when he can smell her perfume. She looks so out of place in her pressed, periwinkle blue dress against the dark stains of the dormitory. 

Jack unfolds the paper to discover dark green knitted fabric, which he holds up in front of him. “‘S… also a sweater?” He frowns. He’s not unhappy, it’s just not exactly what he’d been expecting. It also looks like it’s been run through a mangle made of thorns. 

For the first time since she arrived, Katherine looks nervous. “Unlike the others,” she says, looking down and examining her half-moon nails where her hands are folded in her lap, “I made it myself.”

“You _made_ it?” Jack says, raising a disbelieving eyebrow. 

“I knitted it.” Katherine says. “Badly.”

Jack can’t deny that she’s right. He thinks she’s the most perfect angel ever to walk the earth, but seriously, this sweater is terrible. It looks about three sizes too big for him and she’s somehow managed to fit three different styles of stitching into just the front panel. 

“Do you hate it?” She frowns. Jack realises he hasn’t actually said anything for a very long moment.

“No, no, it’s real nice o’ you.” He says quickly, turning it round and tugging it over his head. “I loves it, see?”

He emerges from the slightly too-small head hole with his hair even more of a mess than usual, looking at her like a puppy whose owner has just offered him a treat. Katherine can’t work out whether she wants to burst out laughing or burst into tears. 

When she’d been wrapping it, she’d managed, somehow, to convince herself that it wasn’t that bad. Sure, she’d thought, it was her first go at knitting – she figures it’s probably something she should at least try to get good at, because it’ll be the kind of thing that Jack expects from a wife, surely – but it was a pretty good first attempt. Katherine had always known that she was a good liar, but sometimes, in moments like these, she amazes even herself. It is categorically not a good first attempt. The sleeves are too short, the body too big, the neck too tight around Jack’s neck, giving the appearance of the sweater attempting to strangle him and she’s pretty sure that only she would manage to knit a murderous sweater. 

Hot shame pools in her gut, swirling with embarrassment. She really, really hopes that he doesn’t reconsider his plans to marry her now that he knows how terrible she is at doing anything even vaguely womanly. But then, she figures, Jack’s not stupid, he probably knows all of this about her already.

“It’s awful.” She deadpans, but Jack can see her fighting back tears. 

Why, oh, why had she spent hours in that stupid armchair fretting over a knitting pattern that might as well have been written in Mandarin for all she understood of it? Jack hates it, she's sure, and she looks like an idiot. 

“Okay, yeah,” Jack says, stretching out his fingers in surrender before reaching over to cover her hands with his own, “but ‘s awfully made by _you_. ‘Sides, ‘s a nice replacement for the one you stole. I was s’posed to get that sweater back, y’know.” He grins at her and, well, how can she stay upset when he’s looking at her like that?

“Oh, you’re never getting that one back.” She jokes, her voice wet with unshed tears that she has to swallow down. “I sleep in it every night.”

Jack chokes. “Hell, Ace, you’s gotta give a guy a little warnin’ ‘fore you says stuff like that.” He blanches, looking away.

This isn’t the reaction she’d been expecting – mock indignation, sure, not arousal, but she can tell it’s real by the way his eyes widen and a muscle in his jaw tightens, twitches. Suddenly the embarrassment doesn't seem so bad after all. And, well, surely it can’t hurt to tease him a little. She leans forward, supremely gratified by the way Jack’s eyes drop momentarily to her chest before snapping back up to her face, guilty. 

“What, you like the thought of me wearing your sweater to sleep in?” She asks, soft and conspiratorial, a smirk playing over her lips. 

Jack’s eyes flick over to wear the newsies are digging through the trunk and pulling sweaters over their heads, swapping to find the right size. He leans away from her, very, very carefully. “We’s in front o’ the boys, Ace.” His voice is low, but his cheeks are pink. Katherine feels powerful, able to fluster the famous Jack Kelly. When she’d first met him, arrogant sod that he was (still pretends to be, if they’re honest, though now she knows better), she never would have thought she’d be making him blush, rather than the other way around. So, she can’t knit. She reckons she’d make a pretty good wife in other ways. 

“My sleeping habits are a perfectly innocent topic of conversation, Mr. Kelly.” She purses her lips and tilts her head to the side, attempting the kind of coquettishness that always seems to work so well for her high society friends. Though, they never said things like what she's about to. “I didn’t say it was the _only_ thing I wore.”

The image of Katherine wearing nothing but his sweater rises unbidden in his mind. Katherine in _his_ sweater. Katherine in _his_ sweater, in _his_ bed. _Fuck._ Jack has to think valiantly of every beating he’s ever gotten to keep himself from pinning her to that bunk right then and there. Jack loves Katherine, wants to do right by her, but damnit if she doesn’t make that difficult.

“Is you trying to _torment_ me?” Jack asks, shifting uncomfortably on the bed and uncrossing his legs. 

“A little. Is it working?” 

For the first time in his life, Jack Kelly finds himself speechless. He has no idea where this side of Katherine has come from, but he reckons it will probably turn out pretty well for him in the long run. Before he can gasp out an answer, however, Race calls over to them.

“We get these an’ you gets that, Jack.” Race grins, gesturing to his own torso, clad in a burnt orange knitted sweater. “Are you sure you’s the one she’s courtin’?” The boys around him snigger. 

Jack has to look down to remember that, yes, he’s still wearing the world’s ugliest sweater and, no, it is decidedly not the reason that he’s sweating so much. Before he can tell Race to kindly fuck off though, Katherine calls over to the rest of the boys. 

“Yes, but this one’s made with _love_ , Race. I couldn’t care less about the rest of you.” Jack is grateful for the respite from her gaze. 

“Charmin’.” Race snorts, tucking his cigar back in between his lips and nodding as if Katherine has just passed some sort of test. “Though if that’s how you shows affection, I think I’ll pass.”

…

“Now,” Jack calls over his shoulder as he heads into his bedroom to grab her present, “I’s savin’ for other things right now, so it ain’t expensive, okay?” He hopes she doesn’t ask what those other things are. He doesn't know if he can handle rejection tonight. 

“Jack, I don’t care how much it cost.” She calls back. He can just see the exasperation on her face, knows it’s there, even with her in the other room. 

“I know, jus’, you’s used to fancy things-“ He responds, emerging from his room with the canvas clasped to his chest.

“Jack.” She cuts him off, levelling a stern look at him. 

“Okay, okay!” He chuckles. Then, nervously, extends the canvas toward her. “Here.”

It takes Katherine a moment to process that the girl in the painting is her, the one he did with her in storage room of theatre, sat at a grand piano. It’s accurate, the background a wash of shadows and the dust particles suspended in the shafts of light so well crafted that they look like stars falling onto her, caught up in the air like chandeliers. He’s changed her clothes, though, put her in the green gown she was wearing that night he came for dinner, right down to the pearl earrings that shine in imagined light. The memories of that dress are bittersweet, as if the fabric holds all the love and pain of that evening – everything. It’s everything, wrapped up in a painting, everything they’ve gone through and all the challenges they have yet to face and everything that keeps them together. 

“You’ve made me too pretty.” Katherine gulps, trying very hard not to burst into tears. 

Jack looks at her for a long moment, assessing her, assessing her reaction, before he seems satisfied that she likes it. Once he is, he crosses to her and wraps his arms around her waist, resting his chin on her shoulder to look at the painting with her. He’s never really, truly satisfied with his own work, but it’s a painting of her and that means that he could look at it all damn day. 

“Nah, Ace.” He smiles, pressing a kiss behind her ear. “I only paints the truth.”

“Says the guy who paints Santa Fe when he’s never been there.” Katherine replies, quick off the mark as always. Smart girl. 

“Sure, but I don’t need Santa Fe no more, do I?” Jack says, pressing his nose into her hair and breathing her in. “I’s got you.”


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for death and grief (don't worry, it's not Jack or Katherine). Your comments genuinely make me so excited, so if you're enjoying the story then please comment (or continue to). I love love love hearing all your responses! xx

For most people, the Christmas season ends with the close of the twelve days of Christmas, on the fifth of January. For the newsies, Christmas both starts and ends on the twenty-fifth of December. The freezing New York winter isn't exactly a source of festive cheer for them. For Katherine, Christmas ends on the thirty-first of December, when seven swans ought to be a-swimming.

Jack doesn't know exactly why Katherine is walking them into a cemetery on New Year's Eve, but he isn't going to ask because Katherine has that look on her face which he knows means that one wrong word from him will break her. However, it is a cemetery, so he figures it can't be anything good. The graveyard is quiet; it's a Sunday afternoon, bright and cold, and most people are out walking in parks or drinking tea in their parlours. They're not frequenting the place where the dead lie alone under ground turned to iron in the frost; cold seeping into the earth like blood into poppy fields.

This particular cemetery is an expensive one. Plots of land here cost serious money and it's clear why, with neatly trimmed grass and well-maintained paths. Marble monuments rise out of the ground on either side, each more ornate than the last. In Mayer's art book, there had been photographs of ritual stone circles as examples of early art. Jack wonders if people realise that their monuments are nothing new, that as expensive as they are, they might as well save their money and stick any old stone in the ground. It'd mean the same, Jack thinks, if you meant it that way. Perhaps it seems worth it to some people, to have their dead somewhere well-kept. Jack has never gone in for that sort of thing. The way he sees it, once you're dead, it doesn't really matter, does it?

They wander through the graveyard, Katherine's arm hooked through his, her gloved fingers stroking absent-mindedly along the inside of his wrist. Jack doesn't own a pair of gloves and his fingers are freezing, but he doesn't want her to stop touching him the way she's touching him, so he grits his teeth and bears through the cold. Katherine seems to know where she's going and, as always, Jack is happy to follow where she leads him. Maybe he should be worried about quite how much he trusts her, but he can't seem to stop.

Eventually, Katherine turns them off the tree-lined path and walks out into a cleared area marked off by short wooden posts. There's only one gravestone here and it's small, unassuming, barely a foot wide and laid flat on the ground with blocky letters carved into its granite.

**LUCILLE IRMA**

**BORN SEPT. 30, 1880**

**DIED DEC. 31, 1897**

Jack hasn't ever been to fancy school like Katherine, but he isn't stupid. He can make the connection. Two years older than Katherine. Two years since she died.

"Your sister?" Jack asks, his voice quiet, as if he's afraid that if he speaks too loudly he'll wake the people sleeping beneath the ground.

"Lucy." Katherine nods.

She's always hated the fact that the gravestone says Lucille Irma, because nobody had ever called her sister that except their mother and, even then, only when annoyed. Lucy had hated the middle name Irma almost as much as Katherine hates her own ( _because really, Ethel?_ ) and nobody ever referred to her by anything other than shortened version of her first name. That said, Katherine hates everything about the gravestone. A name. Two dates. Nothing more. Where is Lucy in this gravestone? Where are her easy smiles and delicate fingers and wicked sense of humour? Where are the piano melodies that used to fill the house and the whispered 3am conversations and all of their hopes and dreams and plans? They're nowhere in the cold, chipped away granite.

"How did-"

"Typhoid." She doesn't look at him, just stares straight down at the stone set in the ground. She supposed the space marked off is probably ready to be filled with similar stones for the rest of them.

Katherine remembers how the sickness took Lucy, with aches and pains and coughs that devolved into a fever all too similar to the one which had wracked Jack. Except that Lucy's fever hadn't broken like a wave on the shore but just kept coming and coming and she hadn't ever woken up.

Lucy was seventeen years old and beautiful. Now that's all she'll ever be.

"You've lost people, Jack." _Understatement of the century._

"Yeah." He responds, his voice still quiet as he wraps an arm around her shoulders and pulls her into his chest, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. With her face pressed into him, he almost doesn't hear her mumbled words.

"Does it ever stop hurting?" And then Jack almost wishes that he hadn't heard her, because it damn near breaks his heart.

"No, sweetheart." He says. He could lie, but what good would it do? "It ain't ever gonna stop. It gets less with time, but it ain't ever gonna stop."

"Why does it hurt so bad, Jack?" She sobs into his chest. "It's been two years."

"I dunno, Ace." Jack wishes he had the answers, that he had something to say that would help, but he doesn't. He doesn't think that anybody does. "It hurts bad on days like these, when you think about them. When you walks into a room an' smell the cigarettes they used to smoke, or when you hear a joke they'd have laughed at."

 _And then you remember again, like the pain of every goodbye you've ever said hits you all at once._ Unspoken words hang heavy in the frosty air like icicles. Theirs. Lucy's. Katherine finds herself wondering, every now and again, what Lucy would have thought of something she's doing. She turns around sometimes, expecting her to be there, expecting to be able to ask her.

"I didn't know how- I'm sorry I didn't tell you-" Jack squeezes her tighter, as if he can squeeze the apologies right out of her.

"Hey." He mumbles, lowering his mouth to her ear. Jack doesn't know quite how to find the right words, to find ones that don't come out as bitter. Because it's hurting him too, this whole thing, and not just the kind of hurt he feels whenever Katherine's upset. No, this is resentment, that Katherine has the privilege of a gravestone that she can visit to mourn. That she's lost someone worth mourning. Because, sure, Jack lost good boys in the Refuge, but who knows where they're buried, if they were even buried at all and not just thrown in the river with bricks tied to their ankles. Because he really wishes that his dad, wherever his unmarked grave is, had been the kind of old man that he could bring himself to mourn rather than to pity. But Jack finds the words. He finds them because he loves her. "I's real grateful you's showed me this. An' I know that it's hard, an' I know that it hurts. But when you's ready, you can tell me about her. She's your sister, so she musta been pretty great."

"She was."

…

Jack had gone to the bank on the way home from work on Friday to open an account and he still hasn't quite gotten over the fact that there is an actual bank account with his name on it. When he had opened the account, they gave him a leather-bound book (which he's pretty sure cost more than the money he put into the account, but they had said it was free and what kind of guy would he be to turn that down?) which he's supposed to use to keep track of his money. They'd called him _Mr. Kelly_ when they'd given it to him.

But walking back to his apartment, feeling vaguely bereft without Katherine's arm hooked through his, he doesn't feel very much like the strong and important Mr. Kelly. He feels like Jack, the street urchin who is playing at being a gentleman.

 _You left us, Jack._ Half the time, when he strips off his shirt, exhausted from the long days, he expects to see Henry's words branded in searing letters across his chest. _You left us._

_You left us, Jack. Why does it hurt so bad, Jack? Fix it, Jack, why can't you bloody well fix it?_

It's enough to make him want to turn right back around and go and bury himself in Katherine, let her hold him and stroke his hair and tell him that he's loved and strong and important, but he's not going to be that weak, he won't let himself, so he keeps walking. She's got enough on her plate without his shit as well.

He shouldn't be surprised that his plan to fall into bed and sleep for a week the second he gets home is rapidly derailed by the presence of another person in his apartment. When have things ever gone the way Jack Kelly intended them to, really?

When he walks into the living room, a rather flustered David Jacobs is sat on his sofa, shuffling through a set of flashcards at an alarming rate. Jack is past being surprised at the presence of friends in his living room at this point – he supposes it's his own fault, telling people that they're always welcome. Turns out that if you tell people that, they tend to take you up on it.

"Hey, Davey." Jack greets him from the doorway.

At the sound of his voice, Davey leaps to his feet and launches himself across the room, cramming the cards into Jack's hands. Jack has quick hands and clever fingers from years of peeling papers apart from one another and painting sets, but even he struggles to keep hold of them all.

"Test me." Davey demands, wide-eyed.

"Well, hello to you too-" Jack responds, crinkling his nose and looking down to examine the cards pressed into his hands.

" _Please._ "

"Okay, uh," Jack squints down at the card, written in Davey's neat, curly handwriting, "what was the Monroe Doctrine?"

"The Monroe Doctrine was enacted on December the 2nd, 1823, by the fifth U.S. president James Monroe," Davey answers immediately and all in one breath, "though it was only called such in… _oh hell_ … 1850! 1850! Okay, it had… one, two –" Davey breaks off to count on his fingers and Jack just tries to keep up with the frightening amount of information written on the back of the card, "-it had four main parts, which were: that the United States wouldn't interfere in wars between European countries, the U.S. wouldn't interfere with other colonies, the Europeans trying to interfere with U.S. government would be deemed hostile, and…"

David stops, stares past Jack, over his shoulder, wide-eyed and terrified. Jack looks round, expecting to see some guy looming over him, somebody with a grudge who's ready to beat him to a pulp, though he's not exactly sure who. There's nobody there though, it's just Davey staring at nothing (or, knowing Davey, staring into the abyss conjured by the idea of a failed exam). Jack lets his heartrate slow. No beating today. That's good.

"And-" Jack probes, squinting at the card and trying to figure out which point Davey has missed.

"I'm thinkin', give me a minute." The other boy snaps. He sounds angrier than Jack's ever heard him and it's jarring; anger isn't something he expects from Davey. "And the Western Hemisphere is closed to further colonisation!"

"Ding ding ding!" Jack forces a grin and chucks the cards back at David, who fumbles to catch them. "What're you stressin' about? You's gonna ace this test."

"No, I'm barely passing." Davey sighs dramatically, flopping down on the sofa and allowing his arm to fall over his eyes. Jack has to stifle a snort as he wanders over to the side table and pours himself a whiskey from the bottle stood there. He fucking needs it after today.

"You's got every point on the back of that card." Jack pours a second whiskey and forces it into Davey's hand.

"Yeah, that one card." Davey moans, dejected and dramatic, but manages to take a gulp of whiskey in the midst of it. "I have over three hundred others."

"Which I bets you know jus' as well." Jack points out, sipping at the whiskey and feeling its warmth sting the back of his throat.

"This exam determines my entire future."

"You needs a break." Jack says, raising an eyebrow.

"What I need is to study." David snaps, removing his arm from across his eyes and staring down at the stack of cards in his lap. They've shifted slightly into a precarious staircase balanced against his leg. "I don't have time to cavort around Manhattan with you, Jack."

"Cavort?"

"Frolic, prance, gambol-" _Has he memorised the fucking thesaurus?_

"I ain't doin' no gamblin', Davey," Jack says, mildly annoyed that David thinks he'd be so reckless as to throw away his hard-earned money on bets – he's stupid, but he isn't that stupid, "I ain't Race-"

"No, not that kind of gambling-" David rolls his eyes, but Jack cuts him off. Not the time, Kelly.

"I needs your help."

If there's one thing Jack has learned about the Jacobs, it's that they love to be needed. They love to think their way out of things and puzzle out other people's problems. Jack hadn't been planning on getting Davey to help him with this, but, hey, it might work out better for the both of them. Especially if it shuts Davey up about this exam.

"Okay?" David asks, looking marginally brighter.

"I needs a financial plan." Jack states, matter-of-fact, and picks up the book that the bank had given him from the side table, waggling it in the air.

"Jack," Davey frowns, "you're great with money."

"Yeah," Jack shrugs, because he is, despite his tendency to buy things for other people rather than himself, "but the bloke at the bank gimme this book an' says I needs to keep track o' what I's savin'."

"And you can't do that yourself because…" Davey raises an eyebrow, dumping the cards off his lap and onto the sofa and wandering over to pluck the book from Jack's fingers.

"I jus' can't, okay?" Jack says, more snappish than intended.

Trust Davey to do this. The boy is sharp as a tack and Jack hates it sometimes. It's like he has some sixth sense for exactly where to apply pressure for it to hurt the most, like he can see the bruises under clothing that he needs to press on. Jack knows, of course, that it's unintentional, but still. It reminds him unpleasantly of Snyder, when he'd make sure that the guards knew where they were already bruised so they could hit there some more. The joke was on Snyder, by the end, because there hadn't been a part of Jack that wasn't bruised. It had all hurt just as bad.

"Jack-" There's that pressure again.

"I don't know my numbers." Jack finally says, staring deep into his whiskey glass, watching how the world gets stained a rusty orange by the bottom of the glass.

He knows he's stupid already, so why do people keep bringing it up? Jack hopes, at least, that Davey has enough common sense – because it's not the same thing as book smarts, no matter what anybody says, and Davey has decidedly more of the latter – to realise that this is being said in confidence.

"What do you mean?" Davey frowns. _Fucking hell, this is like pulling teeth._ Jack downs the rest of his whiskey in one gulp, savouring the burn in his throat, and resists the urge to refill his glass.

"I can do the math in my head," Jack taps a finger on his temple, "but I ain't no good with no symbols on the paper. I never went to school, I can only write 'cos o' the lodgehouse nuns."

"Okay." Davey says, giving him a long, level look.

Jack thanks his lucky stars that Davey doesn't press the issue any further. More pressure and he might break.

…

Honestly, at that exact moment, her father is the last person Katherine wants to see. But they haven't had a screaming match since he set that commission for Jack (admittedly, they haven't had a conversation since then, but still) and so she obliges and goes into his office when he requests it. She makes sure to dab a bit of makeup around her eyes though, just to make the puffiness a little less obvious.

She walks in head held high, as if she hadn't spent the best part of the afternoon sobbing into Jack's shirt – poor boy, she's pretty sure he'll need a new one with the amount of tears and snot that she'd smeared across it, but he hadn't even acknowledged it, just held her tighter – feeling about as ready to take on her father as an untrained matador. Which is why she isn't expecting the conversation to go where it does.

"You want to _what_?"

"I want to take you out to lunch on Wednesday." Joseph Pulitzer repeats, squinting at her over the tops of his glasses. "Really, Katherine, is that so surprising?"

Katherine shoots her father a look that makes it abundantly clear that, yes, it is that surprising. But still. "Okay."

"Good." Her father nods, returning to his paperwork.

Even stranger, the whole thing goes off without a hitch. Joseph Pulitzer, despite his face being rather unwelcome at the offices of his rival paper, picks her up from her office at twelve noon and takes her for a hot lunch at a very nice hotel. The conversation is stilted and he avoids her every attempt to talk about her work, with even the slightest mention of Jack being quickly and expertly skimmed over, but still, it goes… well. Katherine can't quite believe it. And if you'd have told her two months ago that her father would drop her off at work exactly one hour later and ask her to do it again next week, well, she'd have never believed you. Now though… now is different.

She tells Jack about it when he drops by the office to walk her home at the end of the day. He grumbles for three blocks about it being a scheme, _and I know he's your father, Ace, but I ain't trustin' him so far as I can throw him_ , before Katherine gets fed up of it, assuring him with a kiss that this is fine and this is good and this is okay. She can tell that he still isn't happy about it, but he doesn't say anything more about it. It's Katherine's decision, after all, Jack knows, and if he wanted a girl who didn't make her own decisions then he probably shouldn't be stepping out with an explosive journalist who can banter with his boys better than he can.

His letting the topic go does work out in his favour, though, in the end, because she stands on the corner of street and kisses him with such gusto, hands tangling in hair and teeth tugging at his bottom lip, that she very nearly knocks his newsboy cap right off his head. He knows that the neighbours will be watching – high-society layabouts with nothing better to do than gossip about them – out of their neat, white-painted bay windows with ivy crawling up around them. And he knows that she knows and that she doesn't care. He loves her even more for it.


	22. Chapter 22

The new year passes in such a flurry of activity that Jack and Katherine hardly have time to stop and admire it. Ostensibly, it ought to be like any other new year in New York, cold and hard on the newsies, with freezing fingers and people refusing to buy papers in midst of post-Christmas penny pinching. And, if they’re all totally honest, it is like any other new year. Jack spends the majority of it taking on as much overtime as he possibly can and coming home to an apartment with a minimum of four newsies sleeping on his living room floor at any one time. 

He hardly sees Katherine that first week of January and the whole thing feels like it did back when he was constantly working to get by, stolen moments, stolen kisses, notes left in pigeon-holes. But that’s okay, because Katherine will write him these long letters to tell him about things and he tries his best to read them when they appear in his pigeonhole each day. The words he can’t understand go on his list to look up when he finally gets around to visiting the Jacobs – which will probably be after Davey’s college entrance examination because Davey is freaking out and completely blind to anything other than textbooks and past papers. And so what if he doesn’t write back? He draws her sketches in his lunch break at work instead, tiny renderings of birds and typewriters and buildings. 

There’s something in the frigid New York air, like the city is holding its breath, waiting for something immense to happen. The new century is upon the city and the weight of its potential is thick in the air. It’s like a gas, and those who breath it in get high enough to believe that anything is possible. New York is alive with it, with the hope and promise of the American dream. 

Jack isn’t so much of a dreamer as he used to be, but this is one dream that he’s hoping will come true. Although most of his overtime pay goes toward helping out the newsies that are down on their luck, the financial plan which Davey put together for him is sure as hell working. 

And not that he’d ever say it out loud, but Pulitzer has done him some sort of favour by hanging that painting of his in the dining room for the Christmas party. Since then, Jack has had no less than three separate letters requesting paintings from other aristocratic families, offering what he thinks is frankly an absurd amount of money for his work. But hey, if they have more money than sense, who is Jack to deny them? 

He’ll be able to afford that ring by March and, if all goes well, the deposit for a house by June.

He doesn’t think that the euphoria of walking out of his editor’s office each week with an envelope containing twenty-three whole dollars will ever properly wear off either. There’s still a sort of elation that lingers around it, knowing that he’s holding money that is going to set him up for the future. _Their_ future. He gets to enter this money into that leather book, too – all by himself, mind you, because Davey split up each week’s paycheck into different columns and each time he gets paid Jack just has to copy the symbols that Davey wrote that first time. He doesn’t even have to know what they mean. Sure, the whole endeavour makes him feel a little bit like the school's dunce copying off the board, but hey, if it means he’s going to get a ring and a house, then who is he to complain?

“Hey, Jack, wait up!” Jack spins around to see Daniel hurrying down the corridor towards him, a sheaf of papers clutched against his chest. “Payday, right?” The other man asks, nodding at the envelope in Jack’s hand.

“Sure is.” 

“You want to come out for a drink?” And, well. Jack really ought to get back and work on some commissions, but isn’t this what normal people are supposed to do, after work on a Friday? Isn’t he allowed to have fun, sometimes? Daniel seems to think he’s some sort of god on earth and the feeling of that it so unusual – at least, it is now that Henry has made it incredibly plain exactly what the newsies now think of him: _you left us, Jack_ – that he really doesn’t want to disabuse the kid of that notion. “My folks have gone to stay with some family upstate,” Daniel continues, the tips of his ears turning pink, “first time I don’t have my ma waiting for me to come home.”

 _Folks, huh? Yeah, normal people have those. Ah, screw it._ “Sure, why not?”

“Great!” Daniel squeaks, his eyes widening as he almost drops the pile of paperwork. “I- yeah, fantastic! Just let me drop these off with Mr. Rogers and I will be with you.”

And it all goes terribly well, from Jack’s perspective at least, until they round the corner at the end of the street. That’s when he sees an unmistakable flash of dirty red and black and he’s off running toward the mouth of the alley where there are boys brawling. It’s not that it’s Spot – Jack knows better than to get involved with Conlon’s business unnecessarily – but that this is Henry’s usual selling spot. _I swear, if that kid’s picked another fight…_

“Spot!” Jack hollers as he sprints forward. “Spot, cool it! The hell’s happenin’ ‘ere?” 

Spot, along with his companion, wheel around. Jack doesn’t even have a chance to get another word out before Spot’s friend – Hotshot, Jack notes in the split second before the pain comes – turns around and socks him in the face. 

_Well, that hurt._ Jack brings his hand up to swipe across his lip – yeah, definitely split open, but no damage to the teeth, thank goodness, because where would he be without his smile? He turns his head, spits a little blood, then turns to Hotshot, who at least looks slightly guilty and is no longer looming over Henry. Henry, for his part, is backed up against the wall. Spot still has his hand on Henry’s chest to keep him from going anywhere, but at least Jack can work with that. 

“Ah, shit, Hotshot,” Jack grimaces, looking up at the boys, “whatever Henry’s up to ain’t no reason to soak _me_.”

“Don’t look at us, Kelly, your boy’s the one who started it.” Spot snarls.

“Yeah, well, I’s finishin’ it.” Jack replies, rolling his shoulders back. He learned a long time ago that it’s one of the few advantages he has over Spot. Even though they’re pretty evenly matched in a fight, Jack is significantly taller. That’s got to count for something, right?

Spot levels a look at him. Jack can almost see the cogs turning it his head, weighing his options. Is this worth starting an all-out gang war over? Jack certainly hopes not. Finally, Spot nods, taking his hand from Henry’s chest and shoving the boy toward Jack. “I’s lettin’ you off on this one, Jack, but you needs to keep your boys in line.”

“Oh, me an’ Henry are gonna have a real good heart-ta-heart later on.” Jack says, his tone dark as he slings an arm around Henry’s shoulder. It feels more like a headlock. 

“You better.” Spot nods, turning away. 

“What- I-“

Jack hears a stammer from behind him and remembers, for the first time since the beginning of the encounter, that they have a spectator. Closing his eyes, he is acutely aware of several things. Firstly, that Daniel has definitely never seen a fight before, even one as mild as that. Secondly, that Daniel will probably tell everybody else in the office. And thirdly, and worst of all, that Daniel isn’t going to look up to him anymore.

“Sorry you had to see that, Danny-boy.” Jack says, turning around to face him and swiping at his lip. _Still bleeding. Damnit._

“Nah, it’s uh- pretty impressive, actually.” Well, that wasn’t the reaction Jack was anticipating. Honestly, he was expecting Daniel to be thoroughly disgusted with him – maybe he was, maybe he was just being kind. But the kid is looking at him with something akin to awe. 

It takes him a moment, but Jack finally manages to gather himself enough to hedge: “Y'sure you still want that drink?”

“Yeah, of course.” Daniel nods emphatically, as if Jack is ridiculous for even suggesting that he wouldn’t. Then he turns to Henry and sticks out a hand for him to shake. “Henry, right? Would you like to join us?”

Henry looks to Jack, who just shrugs. Jack isn’t going to push things one way or another here. He’s as lost as the other two. After a long moment, Henry nods, taking Daniel’s hand. “That’s real nice o’ you.”

…

Daniel has taste, Jack has to give him that. The bar the kid suggested is a quiet little place tucked away from the city’s main thoroughfares, a brick building, low and squat like it's hacking out a cough. Inside, it has dark booths hunched up against the walls, but it's clean and it's cheap, which Jack greatly appreciates.

“This ain’t gonna be no regular occurrence, ‘fore you goes gettin’ any ideas.” Jack says, wandering back over from the bar and setting a beer down in front of Henry on the notched, scratched table. 

The boy’s eyes go wide at the alcohol being put in front of him. Jack figures the poor kid probably needs some liquid courage, after everything, and he’s never claimed to be a law-abiding citizen. He sits down with his own bottle, pressing the cool rim to his lip, the temperature soothing on swollen flesh. 

“So, Daniel,” Jack says, turning to the other man, “you said your folks is outta town?” 

“Yeah, gone to see my grandparents.” Daniel nods, sipping at his drink. _Parents **and** grandparents?_ Jack thinks. _Surely that’s just greedy._ “They live up in Albany. My Ma, she normally quizzes me on where I’ve been if I get home late, so it’s nice to have the freedom.” 

Jack knows the kid means well, but still, it stings. He puts a hand on Henry’s leg under the table and shoots him a look that says, very clearly, that now is _not the time to pick a fight_. People are used to what they’re used to, he reminds himself, and any kind of relationship includes some element of resentment. God knows he’s spent long enough resenting his old man. But it’s hard not just getting up and walking out of there, because Jack is pretty sure he’d give just about anything to have a mother who was both alive and cared about him.

“You live alone, right?” Daniel asks, leaning forward with his elbows on the table, utterly and thankfully oblivious. 

“Nah, my brother rooms wi’ me, Crutchie.” Jack shakes his head. “Great kid.” 

Daniel nods, then looks between Jack and Henry. “And how did you two meet?” 

How to explain that one? _Yeah, I found six-year-old Henry on the steps of St. Augustine’s in January without a coat and taught him to sell papes._ Somehow, Jack doesn’t think that particular explanation is going to fly all that well. 

“Oh, Henry’s my brother too, ain’t you?” Jack says. Henry’s eyes snap over to him, looking at Jack like he’s just told him that he is going to inherit a million dollars from some long-lost aunt. Henry looks and looks and looks, in a way that feels to Jack uncomfortably like the boy is peeling back layers of skin to stare at his insides, then finally, slowly, nods. Jack nods back, then continues. “But this one don’t live wi’ me at the minute, else he wouldn’t be gettin’ himsel’ into trouble like that, wouldja?” Jack elbows him and Henry shakes his head, obedient. 

“How many brothers have you got?” Daniel laughs a little, taking another swig of his beer.

“Too many.” Jack grins, ignoring the way that his lip burns at the action. He slouches a little in the booth, stretching and languorous as he brings the neck of the bottle back to his lips. “‘S like I collect ‘em, or somethin’.”

…

Daniel takes his leave of them after around two hours in the bar. Honestly, Jack can’t remember a time in recent history where he’s been that relaxed when Katherine isn’t around. It’s a nice feeling. Daniel, he reckons, with all his out-of-touchness, could be a half-decent friend. 

Henry walks back with Jack as they turn toward their respective homes. They can’t help it – they’re both heading in the same direction, so the younger boy focuses very hard on his boots and how they scuff along the pavement. 

“I’s sorry ‘f I showed you up in front o’ your work friend.” He says, finally.

Jack looks over at him, surprised. “Ain’t no bother, Henry. Jus’… don’t pick no fights with no Brooklyn boys, alright? I don’t wanta be cleanin’ you up off the sidewalk.”

“Yeah,” Henry nods, chastised, before looking up to examine Jack’s face, “how’s your lip?”

It’s swollen and it hurts pretty bad, but it’s stopped bleeding, so Jack isn’t really too bothered, if he’s honest. “I’s had a lot worse.” He shrugs, then grins at the other boy. “Kath’ll kiss it better for me, ‘m sure.”

Jack doesn't intend for the words to be pointed, but they come out as such. How could they not, after the comment that Henry made? Jack isn't ashamed of the fact that he's taking things at Katherine's speed and he's not going to be one of those men who whisper to each other over whiskey about what their wives and girlfriends will let them do in bed. There's a certain level of honour that even Jack has even without pretending to be a gentleman. Still, he can't deny that there's a certain expectation, somehow, amongst the boys, that Jack ought to be doing such things - he has, in the past - and that makes his skin prickle in discomfort. Henry, of course, picks up on this.

“'Bout what I said 'bout her on Christmas…” _shit, here we go,_ “what I said generally. Half the boys ain’t talked to me since. An’ Crutchie come by an’ proper laid into me about it.”

Jack cringes. _Of course, Crutchie had done that, of course he had._ Loyal to a fault, that kid. Jack just wishes that the boy had found somebody more worthy to put his trust in, because he sure as hell doesn’t deserve it. He doesn’t even want to think about what Crutchie said. 

“‘S forgotten, kid.” Jack lies through his teeth. Those words – _you left us, Jack_ – have been the first things he hears when he wakes up in a morning and the last things before he goes to sleep at night and they wreck him every time. He’s trying so hard, damnit. “I decked you, we’s done.”

“I ain’t forgotten.” Henry says firmly, dropping the nervousness for the first time in the conversation, though, predictably, he picks it back up again fast. “I- I didn’t mean it. Wi’out you… the lodgehouse… well, you know that Racer can be a piece o’ shit at the best o’ times-“

“Yeah, he can.” Jack snorts.

Because, hell, Race is his brother and he loves him, but the kid can be an absolute nightmare. He alternates between angry outbursts and euphoric glee and nobody knows on any particular day which one they’re going to get. Jack will never regret having Race as his second – the kid is loyal, a good fighter, a good leader – but he wonders sometimes if the lodgehouse wouldn’t be better off with someone else in charge. But then again, Race had managed Carl’s croup admirably, despite his abject terror at the whole situation. Plus, even Race will only be at the lodgehouse for another year or two before he ages out.

“Yeah-” Henry huffs out a laugh, aiming a kick at a loose stone on the pavement and sending it skittering across the road, “-‘s hard wi’out you, Jack.”

“Yeah, it sure sounded like it.” Jack says, bitter and biting. Henry recoils.

 _You left us, Jack. You’s not one of us no more._ The kid is just angry. Jack’s been angry often enough. He's spent half his life angry. Oh, it’s like looking in a mirror. Jack remembers being like that. Fifteen and angry at the world. At least the fifteen-year-old walking beside him hasn’t had anger beaten into him. _Take the apology, Kelly. It's the nearest to peace you're ever going to get._

Jack coughs and forces himself to soften his tone as he claps Henry on the shoulder. “Lashin’ out like that, though, it ain’t gonna do you no good.”

“What do you do instead?” Henry squints at him.

“Kath’s tryna get me to talk it out.” It’s true. He’s getting better at it, too, rather than just flying off the handle, or else Katherine’s just getting better at calming him down. Jack has a sneaking suspicion that it’s the latter. “I ain’t too good at that, but I finds that jus’ sittin’ with her helps.”

“I ain’t got nobody like Kath, though.”

Jack forgets, sometimes, just how lucky he is to have Katherine. Not just a best girl, but Katherine specifically. Not many people have something like what they’ve got. Maybe, after all these years of not having anything, he’s forgotten how to have something good. It’d explain how he keeps screwing everything up, for sure. 

“You’s always welcome round the apartment. ‘F that’ll help.”

Henry snorts. “Crutchie won’t like that afta what I said to you.” 

“Crutchie ain’t the one who pays rent.” Jack says, pinning the younger boy with firm, level stare. “You’s family, Henry.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Jack confirms. They walk a few more steps before he works himself up to asking his next question. “What did Crutchie say, outta interest, like?”

“Said I didn’t know half o’ what goes on in the Refuge an’ it ain’t my place to say nothin’ about it.” Henry gulps, refusing to meet Jack’s eyes. “An’ that you don’t speak about no lady like that. An’ that you’s done more for all o’ us than most people does for one person in a lifetime.”

 _Crutchie. What a kid._ “Well, he’s right on the first two.”

“I knows.”

“Good.” Jack nods, coming to stop in front of the entrance to his apartment building and fishing around for his keys in the inside of his jacket. “You comin’ in?” 

Jack jerks his head toward the door. Henry looks between Jack and the door, then nods, slowly. It feels like a victory. 

…

Jack rides the high of being back in with his boys well into the next week. In fact, he’d actually classify the first two weeks of the new century as going quite well, really, until the Tuesday. The Tuesday is when everything falls apart.

“Mr. Kelly.” Jack looks up from his desk, ink-stained fingers not leaving the paper. He’s got two hours until the end of the working day and he wants this illustration perfect by the time he packs up to leave. 

“Ralph – Mista Pulitzer – what?” He stumbles to his feet.

Ralph Pulitzer is quite possibly the last person he’s expecting to see in his office on a Tuesday afternoon. How does he even know where Jack works? They’ve met once – no, twice, they exchanged pleasantries at the Christmas party. 

“There’s been an… incident.” Ralph says, his tone flat.

Jack’s stomach drops. “‘S this about Kath? Is she hurt?” He can’t breathe. 

“She’s alright,” Ralph nods slowly, “but she’s asked me to fetch you. She couldn’t come herself.”

 _Why couldn’t she come herself? What’s wrong?_ Jack feels his chest tighten the way it does after a nightmare, the way it does after he’s screamed himself hoarse. _Keep it together, Kelly._ He needs to see her. He has to see her. He can't think.

“It’s okay, Jack,” Daniel says, though it sounds distant even as the other man leans over the desk to clap him on the shoulder, “I’ll stay late and cover anything you need doing.”

“Thanks, Dan,” Jack nods, snatching up his jacket from the back of his chair, “you’s a real pal – a drink, on Friday, on me, whatever you wants.”

Ralph turns to leave and Jack follows, taking long strides to catch up with the other man as he shrugs on his jacket.

“What’s happened?” There’s a desperate edge to his voice and Ralph looks at him, pitying, as he places a newspaper in Jack’s hand.

Jack squints at the typeface, thick and blocky. The smell of newsprint, like home, like hard work. **PULITZER HOME DESTROYED; TWO WOMEN BURNED TO DEATH.** There’s a picture, the house barely a burned-out shell, loose electrical wires, the cause of all this, hanging limply from charred floorboards. It’s all there in the newspaper. So very, very, flammable. Blood pounding in his ears. Smoke in his lungs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is really badly written, but I couldn't get it to play ball. Anyway, it at least comes only a day after the last one, if that counts for anything at all. I hope you can at least enjoy it a little bit until my writing goes back to normal - comments, as always, make me really really happy.
> 
> Also, the Pulitzer house fire was a real occurrence - if you want to find out more about it then you can read James McGrath Morris' PHENOMENAL biography of Joseph Pulitzer, it has a great chapter about the fire (but I read it cover to cover and it was brilliant). Also, I stole the headline from the actual New York Times article about the fire. The article in question did not include a picture and was published on the Wednesday, but I reckon that the evening papers would have got wind of the house fire before they went to print, so I tweaked the timeline a little. 


	23. Chapter 23

“Kath?” Jack calls, his voice thready and desperate, pushing through the doorway and looking around the hotel room. 

It’s huge, bigger than the whole lodgehouse dormitory, dark wood panelling and furniture covered in fabric so pale that Jack’s pretty sure that he’ll be charged for ink stains if he so much as breathes near it. There’s the most fantastic fireplace, huge and surrounded by these blue and white tiles that look as if they’ve been crafted by Mr. Wedgewood himself. The Hotel Netherland is the kind of place, Jack concludes, that he would steal from, not stay in.

But it’s the bed that Jack’s interested in, so interested, in fact, that the moment his eyes land on it, he can hardly think of anything else. It’s no more interesting than any other piece of furniture, but the girl that’s sitting on it… well. He’s never seen her look so young, all white nightgown and his too-big ratty sweater pulled down over her hands, feet not quite reaching the floor, her hair braided with a ribbon tied at the end like a little girl. She looks so young, in fact, that he can hardly tell her apart from Edith, who is similarly dressed, minus the sweater, and tucked under her arm. And then she looks up at him and his heart nearly stops. 

Jack doesn’t quite know how he gets from the doorway to the bed, but he does, dropping to his knees in front of her and looking up into her face. Her right cheek is taped over with gauze from her cheekbone to her chin, a distorted masquerade mask. “Oh, Kath, sweetheart.”

“It’s not as bad as it looks.” She sniffles, biting her lip so hard that she tastes blood. 

Jack’s never seen her look so wrecked. Either she’s trembling, or the air around her is hazy, vibrating, as if she brought some of the smoke with her out of the fire. When Jack reaches his hand out and covers hers, where it rests on the crisp white bedsheets, he decides it’s the former. He gulps as he twines their fingers together. 

“It must be pretty bad, if you’s cryin’.”

“There was a fire.” Katherine tells him, a sob rising in her throat. She swallows it down. Jack never complained when he was hurt, so she shouldn’t either, surely. 

“I know, darlin’, I know.” Jack squeezes her hand, only to feel Ralph shift closer to them. A chastised infant, he lets go of Katherine’s hand and she feels it like an ache, like shattering. 

He turns his gaze to Edith, whose eyes match Katherine’s, reddened and puffy. Jack hopes that it’s from the smoke. “You okay, Edith?” He asks, ducking his head a little so that he can meet her eyes, his voice low and kind. For the first time since he met her, Edith graces him with a small smile. And then his heart jumps into his throat.

“Constance-“ He chokes, eyes flying toward the doorway.

“She’s with mother.” Katherine cuts him off. Jack feels everything in him sag in relief. 

“Who are the two who…?” He can’t even bring himself to finish the sentence. He can taste the smoke of it on his tongue, the heat and smog of it, like he was there with her. It fills his throat, chokes him. 

“Elizabeth Montgomery. Constance and Edith, she is –“ Katherine breaks off, looks away, squeezing Edith a little closer into her side and pressing a kiss to the top of her head, “she was - their governess. And Morgan Jellet. The housekeeper. She went back in to get the Christmas presents she hadn’t given out yet.”

“Herbert said that was stupid.” Edith croaks out, barely a whisper. Jack hardly even hears the words. 

He’s never before been glad when somebody died, not even his father. He supposes that he probably will be when Snyder kicks the bucket, but he’s a special case. And Jack isn’t glad that the two women are dead, he isn’t a monster, but he can’t help but feel some small measure of relief. Those are names he doesn’t know. Not one of those women was called Katherine and that’s enough to make him want to cheer. 

“But everybody else is fine?” Jack asks, his eyes a little crazed, knee bouncing against the floor. 

“They’re fine, I’m fine.” Katherine assures him, reaching out to lay her hand on his shoulder, a benediction. She frowns, even as he stills under her touch. “Are you fine, my love?” 

She’s so pale, ghost-like, it’s hard to believe she’s even there. Jack wonders, distantly, if her fingers will pass straight through him. She’s here, right in front of him, he can feel her, but it’s like she isn’t all at once. As if there’s something missing, as if she left a part of herself in the ruins of that house. 

“I’m always fine, Kath,” Jack nods, taking hold of her hand where it rests on him and bringing it to his mouth to press a kiss to her knuckles. He’s amazed that she’s solid, that she’s there. He never wants to let go of her, wants to hold her close every second of every day to come to make sure that she doesn’t slip away from him, away through some door into a different world. “You’s the one who’s tremblin’.”

Is she? She hadn’t noticed. Katherine bites her lip. The skin is cracked there, chapped from cold and dehydration. A droplet of blood wells up from one crack in her bottom lip, perfectly spherical, a fiery tear. She can taste it, sharp and metallic on her tongue. 

“You don’t look fine.” She tells him. 

“Then stop lookin’.” Jack says, sitting back on his heels to look up at her, a ghost of a smile on his lips. “I’s jus’ worried Kath. The thought o’ you… I don’t wanta ever let you outta my sight again.” 

That’s all it takes. Katherine bursts into tears, the crying aggravating the stripped away skin of her cheek under the gauze, pulling at it, but she can’t seem to stop. 

“Hey, hey.” Jack pulls her close, all too aware of the fact that her brother is stood not two metres away, watching him – essentially a stranger – embrace his little sister. Jack’s pretty sure, even as different as people are in high society, that this will not end well for him, but what is he supposed to do? She’s crying, for goodness sake. “Y’did so well, you marvellous girl. You’s been so brave.”

Katherine’s face is buried in his shoulder, but Jack fixes his eyes on the opposite wall, willing himself not to break. Edith sits, abandoned, on the coverlet. Jack lifts one hand from Katherine’s back, beckons, pulling the girl into the hug a little, squashing her against Katherine’s side and his own. 

“I should have gone back in for Elizabeth and Morgan.” Katherine sobs, tucking her head into the side of his neck, her hands fisted in the front of his shirt like a lifeline. 

“No, _no_.” Jack shakes his head. He’s nearly crying himself. “You did exactly the right thing. You couldn’ta saved ‘em an’ you might not have made it out. Then what’d I do, huh?” He gives her a tight squeeze, pulling away a few inches to look into her eyes properly, almost ready to shake her because he wants her to hear the truth so badly. “Where’d I be wi'out you to sort me out, huh? I _needs_ you, Ace.” 

Jack has spent most of his life wanting. Wanting, wanting, greedy little urchin that he was, craving that feeling of a full belly, imagining how soft sheets might feel across his sore skin, gluttonous for all of the affection – from the rough and tumble punches of his boys, to the way Esther brushes his hair back from his face, to Katherine’s soft skin and worshipful touches. He wants it all, he can’t get enough. And he’s never, ever, not in his whole life, wanted anything so much as he wants to be able to take her pain away. 

She’s cried before, in frustration, in grief. Even because of him – and doesn’t that just break his heart even more? But this, this is different. This is self-hatred. Jack knows how that feels. And he just wants to take it away. He’d take it on, if she’d let him. Shoulder the weight of her pain on his back and carry it all the way to Santa Fe. He can’t do that, though. It makes him want to cry as well. 

“I should have-“

“You can’t think like that, Kath. Ain’t how it works.” He brings one hand up, cupping her face where it isn’t bandaged. “What is it that you said to me, ‘bout my ma? _My love, ‘s‘not your fault?_ ”

“That’s different.” She mumbles. 

Katherine closes her eyes and leans into his touch. Jack can feel Edith’s smaller fingers clutching at the fabric of his sleeve. _Katherine, Edith. Constance, in the next room. Okay._ Jack reminds himself that it’s okay to breathe. He’s allowed to, now; they’re okay.

“Nah, it ain’t.” Katherine’s stopped crying, and that’s enough for Jack to let a shaky smile cross his lips and remove his hand from her cheek.

Normally, he’d be unconcerned about propriety, but he’s all too aware that Ralph is looming behind him. If he wasn’t so worried about Katherine right now, he’d have been out of that door in a flash. Sure, he likes Ralph well enough – he’d been decent when Jack had gone for dinner at the Pulitzers’, which is more than he could say for most of them. But he’s a man and Jack is touching his sister. Jack knows where this ends, more often than not.

“I said that months ago.” Katherine says, her brow crinkling in confusion but no tears in her eyes. 

“See, I does this thing with my ears, ‘s called listenin’.” Jack smiles up at her, tucking a loose strand of her hair behind her right ear and tugs on the lobe a little, gentle, playful, as he lowers his hand from her face, careful not to brush against the gauze taped to her cheek. “You should give it a try, sometime. ‘S real fun.” 

Katherine laughs at him even though it hurts, tugging at tender skin. She’s almost forgotten that there’s anybody but Jack in the entire world. 

“Katherine,” Ralph clears his throat, wandering over to the blue-and-white floral patterned armchair near the fireplace and ensconcing himself in it, “you ought to be dressed.” The words are gentle, coaxing, but there’s a sense of chastisement there. Edith pulls away immediately. Katherine is slower. 

She sits up a little straighter, immediately missing the warmth that Jack emanates. She can feel it radiating off him even when she’s just close to him. At first, a few months ago, it had made her nervous and he kept having to remind her that he was just a warm person, not running another fever. Now, though, now that she’s used to it again, it’s comforting. Sometimes, on winter’s nights, she lies in her large, cold bed with its neat, cool sheets, and wonders at how it would feel to have Jack there, warm and solid beside her. She supposes she probably doesn’t have a bed now. It probably got burned.

“Oh, yes, Ralph,” she rolls her eyes at her brother, “just let me walk over to the wardrobe and - oh wait – all of my clothes have been incinerated.” Ralph frowns at her, but Katherine, as ever, doesn’t back down. Jack feels more joy than he probably ought to at how unbreakable she is. Instead, shrugging, she declares: “Besides, Jack’s seen worse.” 

Ralph’s face moves through an expression of shock and into something which Jack reckons could probably spell bad news for him. Jack’s seen that look before, the look of somebody aggravated enough to punch him. Ralph doesn’t scare him. The man’s impeccable posture gives the illusion of being tall, but he’s shorter than Jack and wirier, despite the fact that he’s probably eaten better than Jack has every day of their lives. Even so, Jack doesn’t take his eyes from Ralph. It doesn’t matter that this man hasn’t ever been in a fistfight, it still isn’t wise to turn his back on him. Just because Jack knows he’d come out on top doesn’t mean that the thought of somebody other than Katherine so much as touching him right now doesn’t make his palms start to sweat.

He wouldn’t mind, but he hasn’t seen worse, not really, as much as Katherine keeps teasing him. Their touches are perhaps more intimate than is entirely proper, hands tangled in hair and fingers brushing her waist and bodies pressed together, but it’s not like he’s seen – or touched, for that matter – anything worse than her collarbone. Honestly, Jack isn’t sure if she quite knows what she’s doing to him, how crazy she’s been driving him recently, with kisses that he’s pretty sure if she wrote about them would get her arrested on obscenity charges. But she’s told him, hasn’t she? Three weeks after the strike, when his fingers had toyed with the buttons on the side of her skirt, that she’s waiting until she gets married and, frankly, he doesn’t blame her. She wants to wait? Then they’ll damn well wait. He understands better now, what a scandal it could cause for her – amongst the poverty-ridden areas of the city it’s not unusual to see an unmarried girl pregnant and alone, but in high society? She’d be cast out before she even started to show. And Jack won’t put her through that, he won’t hurt her, and even if she asked him to now he’s pretty sure he’d say no, as badly as he wants it. He will do right by Katherine. He will, even if it kills him. 

Katherine is blushing at the hard glare Ralph is giving Jack, despite having never got up from the armchair he’s in. Her brother’s posture is less relaxed though, every muscle tensed like a big cat ready to pounce. It would be comical, if Jack wasn’t trying so hard to make Katherine’s family, if not _like_ him then at least accept him. Jack holds the other man’s gaze as he shrugs off his jacket, the charcoal one that Katherine bought him that matches the rest of his suit, and drapes it around her shoulders. As Katherine slips it on, their size difference never more apparent as the jacket ends halfway down her thighs, Jack shoots Ralph a look that seems to ask: _happy?_ In combination with the sweater, _his_ sweater, over her nightdress, it’s enough to hide most of her, the soft curves of her where the thin, white cotton clings to her smooth skin. Jack doesn’t think he’s ever seen somebody who is so soft. She’s so beautiful that it hurts, sometimes, because although you couldn’t break Katherine’s will with an iron rod, it scares Jack how fragile the rest of her is. How easily he could lose her. 

“This is a really nice jacket.” She says, a glint in her eyes. “Soft.”

“Yeah?” It feels safe enough now, Katherine covered enough, for Jack to tear his gaze from Ralph and return it to where he wants it. He hums out the words, playing her game. “Birthday present from the sweetest girl.”

“Hm.” She raises her eyebrows as if it’s a surprise and tugs the fabric tighter around her body. “It’s so nice I might have to borrow it.”

“Nuh-uh, last time you borrowed my sweater I ain’t never got it back.” Jack shakes his head, reaching out to pluck at the worn green wool of his sweater – her sweater, now, he supposes. She meets his eyes, then, with challenge leftover from Christmas Day, which already feels like a lifetime ago. So, she hadn’t just been teasing then. His eyes widen and he coughs, adding quickly: “How’s your mother? Your siblin’s?”

Somewhere along the line Edith has slipped from the room, left under the banner of checking on their mother. Jack and Katherine hardly notice. It’s as if the whole world around them is a photograph with a wide aperture, blurry, real but not quite fully present. 

“Mother is confined to bed – she held things together while the house was still ablaze, but she’s bad with her nerves now.” Jack nods at her words. Kate Pulitzer might be a formidable woman, but everybody has to break sometime. “The girls are sad over Miss Montgomery, of course, but they bounce back. They did after…” Katherine trails off, all of a sudden looking like she’s about to cry again. 

“Yeah. I know.” Jack replies, quiet, placing a hand on her knee. 

Even that innocent touch feels like a breach of some unknown piece of etiquette, but he’s so far gone trying to take away the pain she’s feeling that he hardly cares. It’s enough to make him glance over to Ralph, though, who looks surprised. So, he hadn’t thought that Katherine would tell Jack about Lucy, then. 

“The painting you did for me, for Christmas.” Katherine says, barely a whisper. 

“Katherine, thousands of dollars’ worth of art burned in that house.” Ralph snaps, rising from his chair and walking over to the wide, bright window set in the far wall. “Please don’t get dramatic over one painting.” 

The sunlight streaming in, cool toned through the January air, seems aggressive. The world outside shouldn’t be so bright. No dust hangs suspended in it; the Hotel Netherland is cleaned too painstakingly for such things. Davey had told Jack once that dust is mostly made up of the skin and hair that people shed throughout their days. It had disgusted Davey, that notion. Jack thinks it’s rather wonderful, to leave a trace of oneself in a room, layered across the tops of cabinets and behind picture frames. Rooms without dust are rooms without souls. 

“Your brother’s right, Kath.” Jack shrugs, his thumb rubbing soothing circles over her knee. Katherine still looks vaguely like she’s about to throw something at Ralph’s head for that particular comment and Jack would personally like to avoid that, if at all possible. “‘S jus’ a paintin’. I’ll do you a hundred new ones, o’ whatever you likes. You’s alive, an’ that’s the only thing I cares about.” 

…

Ralph is still standing by the window, one of hundreds that stud the façade of the Hotel Netherland, when Jack walks away. He watches Jack, who tugs his newsboy cap more securely onto his head and turns onto fifth avenue, with his hands clasped behind his back and his lips pressed together. When he speaks, he doesn’t turn around. 

“Katherine, I like Mr. Kelly well enough. He seems…” Ralph seems to be weighing the words on his tongue, seeing which ones taste right before he lets them fall from his lips, “…good. I wasn’t expecting the level of concern from him that I saw today. He clearly loves you very much.”

Katherine, from her perch on the bed, plucking at a loose thread on the sleeve of Jack’s sweater, looks up. The words, spilling from the mouth of a Pulitzer (sure, it’s Ralph, the most accepting one of them all, but still – a Pulitzer), feel like a blessing, a pardon. “I love him too.”

“But Katherine,” and oh, if he hasn’t just snatched that blessing away like the promise of heaven in purgatory, “you can’t live on love. You can’t eat it; it doesn’t keep the lights on.”

“It doesn’t need to.” Katherine rises from the bed, pale as a ghost in the white nightgown, and, to her brother, in the midst of all this, as solid as one. She walks over, laying a hand on his arm, and, for the first time in the conversation, he looks at her. “That’s not its purpose. That’s what hard work is for, something that both Jack and I do rather well.”

“He may be in a gentleman’s profession now, but he cannot keep you in the manner to which you are accustomed.” Ralph reaches up a hand to push his owlish spectacles a little further up his nose. In doing so, he knocks her hand away. The inside of her mouth tastes like rejection. 

“Do you think that I don’t know that?” 

“Can’t you see what a dangerous game you are playing?” He hisses.

Of course she does. Katherine is a Pulitzer, it’s right there in her name, and nobody grows up a Pulitzer without knowing exactly how to play the game. Their whole lives are games of chess, carefully calculated in moves of print, politics, and power. She knows the stakes, she always has, knows that in placing her trust in Jack she’s risking everything she’s ever known. The thing is, the stakes don’t matter when you already have what you want. Whether she wins or loses, she has Jack. 

“Can’t you see that what I have right now makes me miserable, Ralph?” The words should be angry, but they aren’t. They’re resigned. “That my home has been burned to the ground and the only thing I’m bothered about losing is a painting? I don’t need fancy dresses and monogrammed stationery to be happy.”

Ralph closes his eyes, nostrils flaring as he sucks in a deep breath. He loves his sister, various indiscretions and all, but sometimes he feels like strangling her. She’s eighteen. Eighteen is too young to be making a decision like this. Because it is a decision, her… _courtship_ with this man. It might be the worst decision she ever makes, the one that throws away everything she’s had up until now. Worst of all, it's ungrateful and that’s what grates on him the most. 

“Father worked hard to give you those things, Katherine.” Ralph bites out. 

And he had, Katherine can’t deny it. Her father had come to America seeking a better life and he’d found it. He’s one of the richest men in New York and he fought to scrape together every penny that he owns. That’s why she can’t understand why he hates Jack so much – because isn’t Jack doing just the same thing? 

“And Jack will work hard to give our children everything he can.” Katherine says, straightening her shoulders. 

Ralph looks over at her and sighs. It has been many, many years since he won an argument with his little sister. She isn’t so little anymore. “I see that I am fighting a losing battle.”

“You are.” A wan smile graces Katherine’s features. “It’s like the strike, Ralph. You adapt, or you get left behind.”

“You are determined, then?” Defeat tastes sour, Ralph decides. 

She sets her jaw. “Perfectly.”

“Then you could do worse than Mr. Kelly.” He nods slowly, resigned. “I shan’t mind having him as a brother-in-law, I don’t think.”

…

Jack sits at his kitchen table, head in his hands, as the twilight edges into darkness, blue shadows in the kitchen fading fast into total blackness. He hasn’t moved since he got back in and, quite frankly, he doesn’t intend to. He needs to _think_. 

“Jack! In the papes-“ Crutchie bursts into the kitchen, his shrill voice tearing through the spikes of pain inside Jack’s head. 

“I knows, Crutchie, she’s fine, I’s seen her.” He cuts the other boy off, low-voiced, not looking up. 

The anxiety on Crutchie’s face falls away, replaced by hope. “Yeah?” 

Hope. Davey has a poem about it memorised, taught to him in school. He says that hope is the thing with feathers. Perhaps he’s right, for some. For some people, hope can carry them up and out of the dust, sending them skyward. For some people, they don’t even see it overhead. And for some – and these, the unluckiest of all – hope carries them up a little only to drop them back down into the dirt. Well, Jack’s been dropped back into the dirt and the dust too many times to be fooled by hope’s fancy plumage again. 

“Yeah.”

“Ain’t you happy?” Crutchie looks at him, with eyes both too mournful and too bright at once to be the eyes of a boy his age. 

Jack scares himself with how much he wants to smack the hope right out of Crutchie. He’s too old for such games now. Jack had it beaten out of him before he even hit the streets. He wonders if he’s actually done Crutchie any favours by coddling him like he has, by taking him under his wing. And then he looks at Crutchie again and imagines how the kid’s face would change if Jack raised a hand to him, and it’s gone, all at once, sapped out of him along with all of his energy. He’s not his father. He’s not a Delancey. He’s not Snyder. 

He drops his forehead to the cool wood of the table, hands fisting in his hair almost hard enough to rip it out by the handful. “I coulda fuckin’ lost her, Crutchie. I coulda lost her.”

_An outstretched hand. A bruising kiss. For sure._

Salt water puddles on the notched surface of the table. Jack screws his eyes closed, wondering if the world might go away if he just shuts them tight enough. He’d almost lost her. Every time, one of them slipping through the other’s fingers like a handful of sand on a windy beach. How long until he can’t catch her in time? How long until she can’t catch him? Because it goes both ways, although he knows that it shouldn’t, that as the man he should be the strong one, the provider. But then in she comes, facing everything head on like she always does, not without fear but because of it, braver than he’ll ever be, and she takes his hand. Saves him from slipping. Saves him from falling. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You would not believe the lengths I went to trying to get period details right here. Do you know how hard it is to find details about the interior decoration of a hotel that was demolished in the 1920s? Also, if you're getting fed up of this story, then PLEASE let me know in the comments. I have a plot outline up to well after them getting married, but if it is getting boring/too long/repetitive, I'd rather know and quit while I'm ahead xx


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter deals with some body image issues and a mild description of past abuse, just fyi. Nothing that should surprise anybody considering the kind of stuff I write. 
> 
> ALSO, thank you all so much for all of your lovely comments on the last chapter. I honestly had no idea so many people were reading and enjoying my ridiculous headcanons! I haven't had chance to reply to the comments yet (alas, my professor is breathing down the back of my neck for an essay on the martial laws of the 1607 Jamestown settlement) but rest assured that I've read all of them and I've been grinning like an idiot ever since. Nothing makes me happier than hearing your thoughts on the events of each chapter, so please keep them coming if you have the time and inclination! xx

Seeing Katherine like that just makes Jack work all the harder. He takes on more overtime during the next weeks than would generally be considered humanly possible. So, when he picks up the phone call that Miss Rhodes has called him down to the lobby to take, he can’t quite keep the exhaustion out of his voice.

“Jack Kelly speakin’.” 

“I hate my editors.” The voice crackles down the line, firm and unmistakable. 

“Ace!” Jack shifts to standing properly, rather than lounging against the reception desk. “You never calls me at work, you okay?”

“No, I am not okay, my editors have told me I have to take another week off work.”

“And you’s called to rant –“ Jack sighs, running a hand over his face, “Ace, I’s workin’ an’ you needs time to re-“ he stutters, tries again, “recoo-“ 

“Recuperate.” She tells him flatly, parroting her doctor. “It’s my face that’s burned, not my fingers, I can still type.” He can hear her scowl. “Come and see me after you get off work?”

“Kath,” Jack’s eyes catch on the expectantly raised eyebrows and upturned lips of Miss Rhodes and he lowers his voice, “that probably ain’t appropriate. In a hotel? People-”

“Jack Kelly, when have you ever been appropriate?” She cuts him off. And he can’t deny it, she’s got a point. 

“Now that’s jus’ uncalled for.”

“Please.” 

He can’t resist her. Never could. Jack groans, rolling his shoulders back as if it’ll get rid of his tiredness. “I’ll try and swing by later. I’s workin’ late tonight though.”

“I’ll wait up.” She tells him, prim and pleased like the cat that got not only the cream, but the fish out of the fishbowl too, and puts the phone down on him.

And whilst, at his end, Jack slopes back upstairs to the office to carry on, Katherine crosses to the vanity. The dressing table in question matches the rest of the hotel furniture, dark wood with a white and blue inlay. It’s beautiful. Katherine wishes that she could match it. 

She leans close to the mirror, so polished and perfect that if she didn’t see her own reflection then she’d think it was a window, and pulls at the edges of the puckered curve at her cheekbone, wincing. The bruising and blistering have gone, leaving her skin with the texture of a thin layer of glue half bubbled up from where it was spread; though it’s the colour that’s the worst, a deep wine red that clashes with her hair and makes the rest of her skin look translucent. The doctor had told her she was lucky that her face only glanced against the searing hot brass doorknob and she knows that she is. But still. The patch of skin can only amount to perhaps one or two square inches, but it makes her feel sick just looking at it. 

Katherine has never been the type to wear make-up, other than when Annie forces her to for parties. Even then, the poor maid has come close to tying her to a chair just to get her to sit still and shut up. Make-up is for the society ladies who care enough about having porcelain pale skin to stay indoors or carry cumbersome parasols. Katherine would rather be out chasing a story. She doesn’t really know what she’s doing, therefore, when she picks up the loose powder, the lid of which advertises in big, bold letters that it makes blemishes vanish like magic, and dabs it over the scar. 

When she realises, later, that it looks more like she’s been hit in the face with a bag full of icing sugar and that the scar is still just as obvious as it was before, she has to try very, very hard not to cry. 

…

Jack hadn’t taken the time to notice quite how ostentatious the Hotel Netherland was when he’d first visited Katherine, instead focusing primarily on the relief of, you know, her not having been burned to death. The building looms high in the evening gloom, its turrets looking like something out of a storybook. They had one in the lodgehouse about a castle, battered with the pictures half worn away, that most of the boys had learned to read with. Jack feels immensely like the peasant boy from that story. 

Inside, the lobby’s gold-trimmed arched ceilings are scrubbed so clean they almost hurt his eyes as they reflect the bright, new electrical lighting mounted on the walls. 

A man in a smart red uniform approaches him. “Good evening sir, can I help you?” 

“Uh, yeah,” Jack nods, pulling off his cap to run a hand through his hair, “I’s lookin’ to go to the seventh floor, please.” 

“Who are you visiting, sir?” 

A beat, then: “A friend.”

“I’m afraid I must press you for a name, sir, both your own and the relevant guest’s. It’s hotel policy.” The man frowns, his eyebrows pulling together and his forehead crinkling. 

“Katherine Pulitzer.” 

_Well, that clearly isn’t the name he was expecting,_ Jack thinks, judging by the way the man’s eyes widen. The response, when it comes, is curt. “Miss Pulitzer is in a private suite, sir. Unaccompanied male visitors are not something we will entertain at this hotel. Good day.”

He gestures for Jack to leave. Scowling, but knowing that there’s no sense in starting a fight, Jack tugs his cap back on and trudges back out into the cold. Well, he’s just going to have to get creative, isn’t he? He’s not going to let Kath down. As Greaves once recommended to him, there’s usually a tradesmen’s entrance round the back. Jack reckons he can be a tradesman for a night.

…

“Room service.” A voice follows the knock on the hotel room door. 

Katherine turns from where she’s stood by the window and crosses to the door, pulling it open just a crack and starting into a polite, practiced speech. “I’m terribly sorry, I think you must have got the wrong – oh!”

“Oh, ain’t this what you ordered?” Jack asks, grinning as he points at himself, then making to turn around. “Lemme go back-“

“Get in here, you absolute fool.” She rolls her eyes, leaning out of the door to look up and down the corridor before tugging him inside. 

Laughing quietly, Jack kicks the door closed and pulls her close, leading her over the armchair that’s covered with a blanket (thank goodness, it would have been stained to high heaven with paint and ink if it didn’t). He flops down, letting his head loll back as Katherine comes where his hands guide her, soft and pliant and gorgeous, curling into him as if her body knows his already. 

“I’s missed this.” He says, eyes still closed, and shivers when he feels her press a kiss to the side of his exposed neck. 

“You’re the one who hasn’t visited.” She replies, voice edged with petulance. 

Jack has taken to wearing a tie to work, says it makes him look smarter, more like Daniel, Walter, and Ernest. Katherine knows for a fact that they’d treat him just the same with or without a tie, but Jack looks really, really good when he gets dressed up smartly and so she is choosing to withhold that particular piece of information. Still, he’s always eager to get what is usually referred to as _this damn thing_ off himself when he gets out of the office of an evening, so she starts work on it. It’s red, his tie, because he only has one, a deep burgundy the colour of wine. Katherine’s fingers tug gently at the knot, loosening it and pulling it away from his throat. She folds it up and slips it inside the pocket of his jacket. It feels nice, to take care of him like this. Jack doesn’t let people take care of him, not often, so when he’s like this, loose and relaxed, it feels like he’s all hers. 

“Yeah, ‘cos Ralph liked me until he had to breathe down our necks as a chaperone every time I shows up.” Jack huffs, relishing the feeling of her fingers at his throat as she pops open the two top buttons of his shirt. He isn’t exactly sure when he became comfortable with Katherine’s touches, especially not in situations like these, when he isn’t even looking and trying to predict her next move, but he’s trying not to overthink it. 

“Hm.” He feels the vibrations of her hummed assent run through him like a shudder.

Katherine can’t resist brushing her thumb over his Adam’s apple as she unbuttons him, undoes him, cracks him open and out of his shell. He has a freckle on the side of his throat, just to the left of where the tendon stands out when he gets himself worked up, hardly bigger than a period in the small advertisements section of the newspaper. She thinks she’d rather like to touch it with her tongue. She wants to learn every inch of him, memorise his skin like it’s a map. 

“Bad day?” Jack asks, his fingers coming up to stroke her hair. These little actions have become normal, commonplace even, so much so that he doesn’t have to think about them anymore. He’d never tell anybody except her, but he loves her hair, the curls, wild and shining, that make his breath catch in his throat. 

“The worst. My editors are idiots.” He can hear the scowl in her voice. “And the girls visited.”

“‘S… nice of ‘em?” Jack ventures, cracking open an eye to peer down at her.

“Oh, _delightful_.” Katherine snorts, tossing her head. “Cornelia told me that Arthur Brooks is now engaged to some prig from New Jersey and _what a shame that I didn’t take him up on his advances before I was disfigured_.” 

It’s testament to Jack’s outrage at Cornelia’s statement that the mention of Arthur Brooks doesn’t make him want to punch a wall. At that particular moment, he would much rather punch Cornelia – or at least teach Kath how to punch her, as it doesn’t matter how much of a bitch she is, it isn’t right to hit a lady. Still, his muscles tense almost involuntarily, his fingers tightening in Katherine’s hair – not enough to hurt, but enough to make their presence known.

“Disfigured?” _Has Cornelia even looked in a mirror recently?_ Jack wonders. She could put on enough make-up to ice a cake and still wouldn’t have a patch on Katherine. 

Cornelia had, of course, said more than that. Honestly, Katherine had tuned most of it out after the comment about her disfigurement, only half listening to chatter about flower choices and colour schemes and all of the nonsense which she finds aggressively boring. She managed to keep her snappy comments to herself when Eliza landed some pointed remarks about Katherine’s preference for _a bit of rough_. She even bit her tongue when one of the girls asked about Cornelia kissing some new bloke she’s courting (Katherine didn’t care to ask who it was – maybe a name was mentioned but, unlike Cornelia, she isn’t so nosy about other people’s affairs) and the woman admitted that they hadn’t yet, that it would be ‘improper’, no matter how _good at it_ he might be, meeting Katherine’s eyes as she did so. Katherine had told herself that Cornelia didn’t know what the hell she was missing out on, not being on the receiving end of Jack Kelly’s kisses, and smiled politely. She’d wanted to smack the smug smirk off Cornelia’s face with the china teapot. 

“I’m just glad I don’t have to deal with Mother and Father shoving me in Arthur’s direction at every gathering now.” Katherine sighs, tucking her head into the side of Jack’s neck, her delicate fingers smoothing out the collar of his shirt.

“I’s glad about that too.” Jack mumbles, trying not to let his anger get the best of him and settling himself a little further in the armchair.

Glad is something of an understatement. Jack feels like cheering that the pompous toff is out of his hair and their lives, but he knows that Katherine would make some comment about him being possessive and he doesn’t want to ruin this, so he tries not to look too smug about it. He fails miserably.

“Aw, were you getting jealous, Jack?” Katherine teases, glancing up at him. 

“Nothin’ to be jealous of.” He says with a cheeky grin. “I’s perfect jus’ the way I am.”

“Liar.” Katherine says, thinking that it’s not a lie at all. She swats at the side of his head, then lets her hand slide into his hair as if it belongs there, stroking the curls back off his forehead. “You’re sweaty, for one thing.”

“I’s been at work all day, shove off.” He grouches, but it’s good-natured. Kath learned long ago that Jack’s verbal expressions of affection are something of spectrum, ranging from flowery compliments, through innuendo, and into playful insults. 

“Long day?” 

“Long _week_.” He remarks, exhaustion heavy in his voice. Her manicured nails scrape gently across his scalp as she cards her fingers through his hair. Jack leans into the touch like a cat fixing to be pet, groaning deep in his throat. “More o’ that, please.”

“Greedy.” Katherine teases, but she doesn’t stop. 

It’s very difficult not to fall asleep when her hands are working that kind of magic, but Jack tries his very best. Between commissions, set painting for the Bowery, and his actual full-time job, he’s pulling something like a ninety-hour week. The stupid thing is, he knows that he could have everything he wants (the ring, the house, _Katherine_ ) at all the times he wants them (as soon as possible) without doing all of this. His wage is perfectly serviceable, could easily support the both of them if they got married, even without Katherine working. But simply supporting two people doesn’t factor in helping his boys. And if somebody has to give, in this whole mess, then he figures it might as well be him. 

And this whole working himself into the ground thing, it’s not because he’s terrified. Absolutely not. Completely, one-hundred percent not. It isn’t because he’s scared of losing her and he doesn’t want to think about it. Because that would be a pretty good way, Jack thinks, of making himself forget. But that isn’t what he’s doing. _It’s not._ At least, that’s what he’s telling himself. 

He doesn’t want to think about it. So, he loses himself in her, turning his head and pulling her into a slow, lazy kiss. There’s nothing urgent about it, comfortable in a way that Jack isn’t used to feeling but he revels in it. Eventually though, she pulls away. Immediately, her eyes widen and she removes her hand from his hair, slapping it over her injured cheek. 

“Oh, Kath, sweetheart, did I hurt you?” Jack twists to face her properly, stricken, hands flying up to her shoulders, “I forgot –“

“No, no, I’m fine.” Katherine says, forcing a smile.

“But your cheek-“

“I just don’t want you to look at it.” She says, all in one breath, eyes downturned. “I’d forgotten – excited to see you.” 

It’s embarrassing, how caught up she is by him. She’s been thinking all afternoon about the best way to cover it up, and then he appears in her doorway with a stupid joke about room service and she loses her head. Jack frowns. Katherine’s mind has always worked faster than his, always been quicker off the mark, but he can usually follow in her slipstream. Now, though, she’s completely lost him.

“What are you on about?”

Katherine looks at him, her gaze withering, and tells him, like it’s obvious: “It’s ugly, Jack.”

His frown deepens, wrinkles appearing in his forehead. “Is this about what Cornelia said?” 

“No,” Katherine sighs, getting up off his lap, then mumbles, “she was right though.”

“Like hell she was.” Jack says, reaching out and catching hold of her free hand to pull her back to him. “Katherine, you ain’t gonna wander ‘round wi’ one hand over your face all the time.”

He looks up into her face, voice quiet and fierce. Jack isn’t honestly sure how he put his foot into this conversation, but he’s damn well got to get himself out of it now. Katherine looks pained, her hand still covering her face, torn between frustration and tears. 

“I don’t mind about other people.” Katherine snaps, pulling her hand away from his. “Just you.” 

She might as well have put a knife between his ribs. She’s said it before, whispered in between kisses when he’s been worrying himself silly about not being good enough for her, _just you_. He never thought that her saying those words could hurt so badly. 

“Don’cha trust me?” 

Katherine looks at him, half desperate for him to catch the meaning behind her eyes. She’s terrified of losing him. So, if she has to, then she has to lose him on her terms. Can’t he see that she’s letting them both down gently? Jack’s loyal, he’s good, he’ll stick by her, if she asks him to. But she couldn’t bear to see him drift away when he realises that they aren’t quite so evenly matched anymore. When he sees what Cornelia sees, what the rest of society sees. Damaged goods. 

She’s spent her life arguing to be judged on more than her looks and here is her comeuppance. She gets her wish; it tastes bitter on her tongue. Every stupid fairy story their mother had read to her and Lucy, all true. _Be careful what you wish for._

“You used to call me beautiful.” She can barely hear the words herself, so it’s almost a surprise when Jack replies.

“Katherine, I still think you’s beautiful.” He looks at her like she’s ripped his heart out of his chest and stomped on it. 

_Time, Katherine. Time’s up._ “But I’m not.”

 _And, honestly,_ he thinks, _where does she get off saying shit like that?_

Something flashes behind Jack’s eyes and it’s enough to actually, honest-to-goodness scare her. She forgets, most of the time, how strong Jack is. What he’s been through, how he fights, how physically powerful he actually is. When he shoots up from the armchair, it’s intimidating, his height, his breadth. He could break her in half. And yet, she never thinks of it, because it’s Jack, her Jack, and she trusts that those strong hands that could snap her wrist won’t do more than hold her hand. The anger behind his eyes is gone as quickly as it came, but she can see it hasn’t left him entirely – it’s still there, tension in his shoulders, the hard set of his jaw. He begins unbuttoning his waistcoat, his shirt, which such speed that she’s afraid he might rip one of the buttons clean off. 

“What are you doing?” Katherine asks, dumbfounded. 

“You called me beautiful, back in August.” He says, his voice brittle as he tugs his undershirt over his head, turning around as he does so. The sight of his scars never fails to make her heart ache. “I had all this all over me. Y’think one little burn makes one tiny jot o’ difference, Kath?” He looks over his shoulder at her, eyes ablaze. “You wanted me to tell you the stories behind ‘em, you said when I’s ready. Well, I’s ready now.”

“Jack,” Katherine takes a deep breath, removing her hand from her face in a vague attempt at pacifying him, “we’re in a hotel room and you’re half naked. What if someone walks in?”

He raises one eyebrow, a challenge, then walks over to the door and twists the lock into place. “Somethin’ _inappropriate_ , Miss Plumber?” Their earlier phone call. Jack sure has a way with words. 

If this was any other situation, Katherine would be kissing him right now – he’s here because she asked him to be, after all, and when he looks like that, well, who could blame her? But this feels different, somehow, the air around them made up of some different combination of elements than usual, as he leads her toward the fire and sits them down at the hearth, turning away from her so that she can see him clear enough. Normally, the atmosphere between them is charged, desirous, of course, but everything else as well, all of the anger and care and worry and happiness that gets bound up under the promise of loving another person. Normally, if you waved a match through the air between them, you’d expect the whole room to ripple into flames. Now, though, it’s different – charged, just the same, but with something else, something cooler. The whole circumstance feels holy, now. Sacred. Perhaps it’s Jack baring himself like this, the sacrificial lamb. 

She takes up his hand, his left hand, the one he draws with, and traces the white line that cuts across a palm hardened by too many years of hard work. Jack looks up into her face, and the trust that she sees there shocks her. Katherine knows what it’s taking for him to do this, to let down these walls for her, but this is an entirely different thing. Even touching him feels irreverent, profane. 

“That one? Y’sure, Ace?” He seems surprised. He’s bared himself to her completely, but she chooses this one? 

“I’m sure.” Her voice sounds surer than she feels.

“Middle o’ winter in the Refuge.” Jack responds with no hesitation. “We had to scrub the floors. My skin got so bad wi’ the cold an’ damp that it ripped open.”

It takes her a long moment to respond and Jack feels panic start to rise in his chest, that inescapable desire to run, to get out, to get away. Maybe he’s grossly misjudged the situation, maybe Katherine doesn’t want him chasing after her, maybe-

“I’m surprised you didn’t get an infection.” 

And there she goes, proving him wrong, impressing him, exceeding his wildest expectations all over again. Jack doesn’t know how the hell he got this lucky. She doesn’t look at him, nor he at her. They both stare down, her finger barely brushing his skin as it maps out the white river, the lifeline, that flows across his palm. 

“Nah,” Jack shakes his head, “they poured salt in it to clean it and then sent me back to carry on.”

“They what?” Katherine looks up, horrified, finally meeting his eyes. A small, shaky smile spreads across Jack’s face, like she’s said something vaguely amusing. 

“Another.” He tells her, his voice low and kind.

It’s like he’s a complete stranger and the person she knows best in the world all at once. Jack Kelly; always new.

Her eyes scan his back, picking out a particular white stripe, jagged and pinched, as if his back had been cut open entirely and the skin pulled back together too tightly. “This one.” 

“Snyder got a new toy.” It’s almost a sneer. Katherine just looks at him, long and level, until he carries on. “‘S this strap,” he holds his hands out in front of him as if he’s clutching it, staring down at the imaginary instrument of torture, “leather, like, ‘s bad enough on its own, but it had these sorta little nails in it, all over it. Dug into you.” 

Katherine is left feeling a little sick. It’s the way he says it, more than the actual description; she knows, of course, that he’s censoring it for her sake. Jack speaks about these things as if they’re obvious, inescapable, the facts of life. She supposes that for him, they are. She wants so badly to take it away from him. Katherine can’t take the silence, so she points to another. “This one.”

“Nuh-uh.” Jack brings his hand up to cup her cheek, arranging his fingers oh-so-carefully so that he doesn’t so much as brush against the inflamed skin. “‘S my turn. This one.”

Her face grows hot under his touch, but she swallows down the bile that rises in her throat. Jack has just been braver than she could ever be. She can do this for him. She’s a Pulitzer. She can play the game. 

“I was going to the end of the corridor to get Rickey. I tripped and smacked my face on the doorknob, which, it turns out, was so hot because of the fire on the other side of the door. I knew I couldn’t get to him.” 

The words are easier to get out than she expected. Jack frowns at her, his hand still on her cheek. “Rickey?”

“Lucy’s spaniel.” 

And it’s those two words that break her, ridiculously. The acknowledgement of absence. _Is this what people mean,_ Katherine wonders distantly, _when they talk about the grieving process?_ She had never thought it would take two years. She never thought coming to the end of it would feel like this – not numbness, not entirely, she’s still feeling, but a silence somehow, an exhaustion. 

“Hey.” Jack pulls her close and she melts into him. She can’t do anything right now; she’s barely keeping her head above the water as it is, so she clings to him, her rock, her lighthouse. “She’s got some company now.” He mumbles in her ear. 

It takes every ounce of her energy to speak. “You don’t believe that dogs go to heaven, Jack.”

“No,” he presses a kiss to the top of her head and she feels his small, contented smile in the curve of his lips, “but I told Les that they did when he started worrying about a dead stray we found.”

“Dogs definitely don’t go to heaven in Judaism.” She laughs into his chest. Katherine may only be half-Jewish, and certainly doesn’t keep any of the traditions, but she knows that much. “You’re a terrible influence.”

“Awful.” Jack agrees. He doesn’t exactly sound broken up about it, honestly. 

By the time that the knock on the door comes, Jack is half asleep, drowsing, stretched out in front of the fire with his shirt only half-buttoned. He reminds Katherine vaguely of a cat, the way he’s almost curled around the hearth. She supposes that makes her one, too, laying perpendicular to him with her head resting on the smooth planes of his stomach. His hand is in hers, resting, in turn, on her own stomach, his thumb rubbing rhythmic circles around each of her knuckles in a never-ending pattern. Under their joined hands, he can feel the way that she moves every time she takes in a breath and it’s soothing, the knowledge that she’s here and alive and his. The knock on the door, though, jolts them both out of it quite quickly. 

“Katherine?” Ralph, on the other side, his voice unmistakable, jiggles the handle. “Katherine, may I come in?”

It takes just one look from Katherine for Jack to snatch up his waistcoat and jacket, rolling neatly under the bed to be hidden by the bedskirt. Katherine takes two deep breaths before crossing to the door and unlocking it to face her brother. Under the bed, laying in perfect darkness, Jack strains his ears to hear their conversation. 

“I’m heading to the train station, I’m afraid Harvard can’t wait any longer.”

“Thank you for delaying going back. I know Mother has found it a comfort – how is she?”

“Her nerves are frayed. The doctor is suggesting that she go to France to recover while Father gets the new house underway.”

“Perhaps a good idea.”

“Keep me posted on things, won’t you?”

“Of course.”

“Look after yourself, Katherine.”

“And you.” 

Jack hears the door close. A few moments later, the bedskirt is yanked up and Katherine appears, staring at him with narrowed eyes.

“Stop it.” She says, spotting his grin even in the half-light.

Jack only grins wider. “You’s gotta admit ‘s kinda funny, Ace.” He snickers, pulling himself out from under the bed.

“We were nearly caught!” She hisses, but she’s half smiling now, and Jack knows he’s won as he stands up and wraps his arms around her waist, looking down at her. 

Even through all this, even now, Jack looks at her like he used to look at the sun on early mornings in July, from his penthouse, when the sunrise would stain the sky in burning watercolours and he could look at it, at its brightness and its warmth, but not for too long, else he’d blind himself. He used to take pleasure in looking just a second too long. That’s how Katherine is, to him. She’s blinding but he just can’t look away. 

Maybe this will be the closest she ever gets to being inside his head, to being a part of him, when he looks at her like this. Katherine’s pretty sure she could live with that, with being this close to him forever. He doesn’t even glance at her cheek and she is suddenly overcome with a wave of affection for him, this loyal, clever, kind man that she gets to call hers. 

“Still funny.” He whispers, the smile still there, a fixture on his lips. 

Katherine shakes her head, but she smiles, even though it hurts. “Impossible boy.”


	25. Chapter 25

When Katherine wakes the next morning, the boning of her corset digging uncomfortably into her side and her hair a mess, she finds herself alone. Despite being fully clothed, she's in bed and – _what's this?_ In her hand, her fingers neatly folded over it, is a piece of paper. Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she unfolds it. It's a drawing, a sketch in hurried pencil lines, on hotel stationery. It's of her, sleeping, and though the scar is there, as a detail, it's hardly visible over the freckles smattered across her cheeks and nose in graphite dots. Beneath it, in scrawled block capitals with the 'N' written the wrong way around, are the words _morning, beautiful_.

She smiles, just a little, and refolds the paper, tucking it into the pocket of her dress.

…

The weeks of the new year wear on. Katherine recovers. Jack keeps working.

Katherine, of course, knows very little of quite how much he's working. She doesn't know that Jack volunteered for all this overtime rather than being assigned it, or about the paintings for her father's friends, or about the big financial plan. She misses Jack, misses how often she's been able to see him over the last few months, but she's so damn proud of him and everything he's achieved that she manages to live with it.

She's back at work and that makes up for most things. It's hard to be content, though, as while she is finally busting out of the social pages, it's a battle to get even the smallest piece of political commentary past Mr. Ross and into the paper. Since he ran into Jack that day outside the office, he has, thank goodness, stopped trying to walk her home, but now he's ripping her every sentence to shreds and she's starting to think that maybe that's worse.

And whilst living in the Hotel Netherland has its perks, she's pretty sure that it's not doing her mother any good. Constance and Edith seem unperturbed by most of it, though have been getting into endless mischief without the supervision of Miss Montgomery, and Herbert, at least, has been once again packed off to boarding school and doesn't have to deal with the family fall-out. Her father, predictably, has made his home in his office, which comes as a surprise to exactly nobody. It's a surprise to Katherine, though, that, all of a sudden, she, the one who most wants to shun the name of Pulitzer, has become the domestic leader of the family.

A short respite comes in mid-February, in the figure of Davey waiting for her outside of her office. She knows, immediately, that the figure isn't Jack, because Davey has set himself neatly on the bench on the pavement, knees together and hands in his lap, in a way that Jack never could. Jack manages to make leaning and lounging look cool, mainly because he can't hold still for very long. Davey, and Katherine thinks this with all the love in the world, is not very cool. He is, however, better at sitting still.

"Katherine!" He does look pleased to see her though, shooting up from his seat and bounding over.

"Davey, this is a lovely surprise." She smiles at him. The smile lessens a little when she realises it's the first time she's smiled at anybody other than Jack in days.

"I wanted you to be the first to know." Davey says, looking a little embarrassed as he holds out a piece of paper.

Curious, Katherine takes it from his fingers and unfolds it, looking down at the crest etched at the top of the page and the neatly typed print beneath.

**Dear Mr. Jacobs,**

**We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted into the New York University School of Law beginning in the academic year 1900-1901.**

Katherine looks up at him, mouth hanging open. Then she recovers herself. "Congratulations! Oh, Davey, I'm so happy for you!" With those squealed words, she practically throws herself at him, dragging him headlong into a fierce hug. When she pulls away, she sets her hands on his shoulders, smiling up at him. "But I never had any doubt."

"I did." Davey nods seriously despite the smile that he can't help from spreading across his face. "I had a lot of doubt."

"I know you did. But completely unfounded doubt!" Katherine smiles, taking hold of Davey's arm so that they can walk together. "Have you told Jack?"

"No, you're the first to know, as I said."

Katherine frowns. "But Jack's your best friend?"

"Yeah… but you're my friend too." David says, almost as if he's afraid of the words. "Plus, Jack, I mean, I love the guy, but… he doesn't really get it. Academic stuff, I mean."

"No," Katherine tilts her head, thoughtful, the comment smarting a little; she has to remind herself that Davey respects Jack and that she doesn't need to jump to his defense, as much as she wants to, "it's not really his thing. He's clever though, cleverer than you think – if I tell him about an article then he asks really smart questions. I bet he'd have done really well in school if he'd have had the chance."

"Definitely." David's eyes light on Katherine's slightly downtrodden expression and he hurries to clarify his meaning. "Helpin' him through the copy of Romeo and Juliet you lent him was agony though."

"You read that with him?" Katherine asks, looking up at her companion.

The sunlight makes it difficult to see Davey's face, but she thinks he looks a little guilty. She hadn't realised that Jack needed help with the reading. She'd just assumed because he always manages to read everything, when it matters, even if he has to ask her about some of the more tricky words. _Jack's clever… right?_

"He was strugglin'." Davey shrugs, attempting nonchalance. "Not that I blame him, but I believe he said 'Juliet ain't the brightest'."

Katherine stifles a laugh. Yes, that sounds like her Jack. "Well… he isn't wrong."

"True." David laughs, ducking his head. "Thank goodness I never have to read Shakespeare again."

"No, you're a law student now!" She smiles, lodging a playful elbow in his side. "I'm so pleased for you."

"Thanks, Katherine."

Katherine thinks over their conversation when she gets back later and realises that maybe it isn't just Jack that the newsies like, but her as well, in her own right. That Davey is her friend too. And when Davey says that, she knows he means it in the way that newsies mean friendship, not the way that Eliza and Rose and Cornelia and Darcy mean it. He means proper friendship. The lay down your life, spit-shaking, rough and tumble kind of friendship. The next few days seem a little brighter.

But the days are all much the same. When she gets home from her editorial job, she sits by her mother's bedside and tells her the bits and pieces she can glean from the papers that won't grate further on her nerves. There usually isn't much to tell – as any newsie will tell you, good news doesn't sell. And Kate Pulitzer, the formidable mother Katherine has always known, deteriorates. She starts to shake at the mere notion of leaving her bed, never mind going outside. The doctor presses the idea of travelling to France for the air and the waters. Katherine tries not to think about how her mother's wasted body looks all too similar to Lucy's.

One Saturday afternoon in late February, she gets well and truly sick of it all. She drops by the Bowery, knowing exactly where Jack will be, and informs him in no uncertain terms that he is to pick up her, Constance, and Edith from church the following day. They're going on a picnic. Jack protests that it's too cold, but he works long into the night to clear his schedule for the next day.

Sunday dawns warmer than expected, but the ground is still covered with snow; it's New York, after all. The grasping branches of the trees glint overhead, bright and hopeful in the frost. Constance and Edith make a game of treading only in the footsteps of people who have already passed by, taking great long strides to reach from one to another. Katherine watches them and wonders who the footsteps originally belonged to. If they'd mind their legacy being erased by two other little pairs of boots.

With the weather as it is, a picnic may have been a little too optimistic, but Katherine asks around – she is nothing if not a reporter. It comes to her attention that a café has opened up in a nearby park, along with some new installation known as a _playground_ , which, whilst Edith might be a little old for, Constance, she is sure, will love. When they leave the church, Jack is waiting for them, the tips of his ears red with cold, but he smiles wide and bright when he sees them coming.

Constance sprints over at an alarming speed, considering the icy ground, and slides her hand into Jack's without hesitation. Katherine takes his other hand, greeting him with a kiss on the cheek because _the vicar is right there, Jack,_ despite the way he turns his head, grinning, trying to catch her out and capture her lips with his own. Edith walks on ahead.

When they reach the park, Katherine settles herself in an outdoor seat at the café, fingers warming themselves around her teacup. The playground is too snow-covered to be much use, but Jack has no problems finding entertainment for the girls. Katherine ought to protest that a snowball fight is unladylike for two girls of their age, but Edith and Constance are smiling, properly smiling, for the first time in weeks and she isn't her father, so she lets it be.

A particularly good shot by Edith has a snowball hitting Jack square in the chest, only for him to clutch at his heart dramatically and fall to the ground, playing dead. Constance takes this as an excellent opportunity to shove snow down the back of his coat. Jack chases them for a bit before leaving them to their own devices and jogging across the park to take the seat opposite Katherine.

With an amused smile, she sets down her tea-cup and reaches over the table to cover his reddened, freezing hands with her gloved ones. Jack raises an eyebrow.

"Wouldn't want you getting cold." She tells him, eyes shining, and Jack could die right then and there and be perfectly content.

"You's got eyes like stars, Ace." He says, almost before he can think the words through.

Katherine throws her head back and laughs, properly laughs, and Jack doesn't know what's funny but he doesn't really care when she sounds this happy. She hasn't let go of his hands, the only thing between his skin and hers a thin layer of wool.

"Did Romeo come up with that one?" She asks, her face alight with mirth.

"No, he didn't, thank you very much." Jack tries to look offended and fails miserably. "'S poetic, Kath." He tells her, rolling the words in his mouth in a manner that he thinks, at least, is a pretty decent imitation of these high-class intellectuals, nodding sagely. " _Deep_."

"Please," Katherine rolls her eyes, "I've met puddles deeper than you."

Jack snorts at that and they both look over to watch Constance and Edith lobbing snowballs back and forth across the grass. Katherine can't deny that she envies the two of them, close as they are. Her and Lucy had been that way, once. And now she's too old to break into Constance and Edith's world, too grown up, too distant. Jack doesn't look at the girls for long though, instead dragging his gaze back to Katherine and taking the opportunity to drink her in while she's relaxed.

"Stop it." Katherine says, cutting into his reverie. She hasn't looked over at him, but there's pink rising in her cheeks.

"What?" Jack asks.

He props his elbows on the table and rests his head in his hands, fully aware that if he wasn't so grateful to have the time to spend with Katherine, he'd be falling asleep right there and then. These long hours are no joke. She looks over at him, finally, and frowns at his elbows as if its their fault, not Jack's, for breaching etiquette.

"Looking at me like that." She turns away again so that she's in profile. If she stays just like this, Katherine knows, if she doesn't look directly at him, then she can still pretend to be perfect.

"Like what?" He's frowning now, looking hurt, unsure if she's teasing him.

"Like you want to draw me." She tells him, refusing to take her eyes from Constance and Edith, now engaged in constructing some sort of igloo under a nearby tree.

"Why? I do wanna draw you, Ace." Jack shrugs, grinning at her, wide and bright even through his tiredness. "Prettiest girl in the world, I tells you all the time."

"I'm not pretty, Jack." She snaps.

Jack's face falls and his irritation grows. Doesn't she know that he's rejected overtime hours at the office for this? The least she could do is actually make an effort toward pleasant conversation. He's knackered, he shouldn't have to deal with this.

"'S this 'bout your scar again?" Jack sighs, rubbing at his eyes with a tired hand. "Sweetheart, I thought we was over this-"

" _Over this_?" Katherine snaps, turning to face him properly, her face a picture of righteous anger. _Well done, Kelly, you've put your foot in it again._ "I'll get _over this_ the day you get over the ones you got in the Refuge."

She might as well have slapped him. And to think he'd thought that she understood, at least a little, or if not, then at least that she cared. _People don't care, Kelly, you know that._ Still, he keeps his voice low, though he can't keep the growl out of it. He loves Katherine. He doesn't want to lose her, not even when she's going to be cruel like this. "'S'not the same thing, Ace, an' you knows it."

"Why not?" She juts her chin out, daring, defiant.

"'Cos yours is from a mansion fire, not years on the streets." It's Jack's turn to snap. "'S a bloody difference."

"Just because your childhood was awful, Jack, doesn't mean that my life is some sort of wonderland."

The second Katherine says it, she knows that she's screwed up really, really badly. She can tell from the way that Jack's eyes harden, the way that he draws a curtain around his features and blocks her out. Emotionless. A far cry from the man who had just told her that her eyes look like stars. And the thing is, she'd known. She'd known it was too far before she'd even said it, but she just couldn't keep her damn mouth shut.

 _Just because your childhood was awful, Jack._ What the fuck does she know about his childhood? Nothing. A few stories of a few scars, a birth certificate, a drawing or two. She doesn't know about the way his old man used to hold his head underwater in the bathtub to stop him talking so much. She doesn't know about how he'd held the hands of those boys in the Refuge, telling them it was going to be okay even as they stopped breathing. She doesn't know anything, she doesn't know anything at all. _Princess fucking Pulitzer._

If Jack was a better man, he'd see right through all this anger and look at the hurt underneath. He'd take Katherine's hands in his and tell her over and over and over again how much he doesn't care about one little scar. But Jack is exhausted and furious. He is not that man.

If he was a worse man, the kind of man he'd grown up around, who drown themselves in whiskey and cigars, he'd hit her for what she'd just said. But Jack is not that man either.

Jack is the kind of man who gives Katherine a long, level look and then stands up, sending his cast-iron chair sliding back over the stone flagged floor with a screech that makes the scattered customers turn their heads to look.

Katherine looks up at him, the anger gone as quickly as it came, replaced by fear. Her voice is small, when she speaks. "Where are you going?"

Jack shakes his head, letting out a humourless laugh. "I ain't dealin' with this right now."

Jack is the kind of man who turns and walks away, because he can't be a better man, and he doesn't want to be a worse one.

Katherine sits still, completely stunned, staring at Jack's retreating form. What is she supposed to do with that? _I ain't dealin' with this right now._ Is that it? Are they done? Is it her fault? Does he not want her anymore? Is it because of her scar? She pushes the final thought away, trying, against the odds, to think logically. Jack is good and kind. He's made it perfectly clear that he loves her just as much with a scar as he did without. That's not the issue. The issue… well, the real issue is therefore a little harder to swallow. The real issue is that she pushed him away with her harsh words. Why had she said such stupid things?

Katherine makes her mind up to go and apologise, but before she even has time to get to her feet, a voice speaking her name cuts through the chill winter air. "Katherine!"

She turns to greet whoever it is and her heart sinks. "Cornelia, Darcy." Katherine forces a smile onto her face and resists the desire to find some way to cover her cheek.

"We have the most exciting news!" Cornelia cries, clutching at Darcy's arm as if she's trying to cut off his circulation.

But the only thing Katherine can think about is Darcy's uncomfortable expression and the way his eyes keep flicking to her cheek, his lip curled. Cornelia, however, can always be relied upon to break the tension. She thrusts out a hand festooned with the most garish ring Katherine has ever seen. Her finger is practically weighed down with it.

"Five carats." The other woman squeals. Katherine stares, dumbfounded, but eventually she manages to croak out a _congratulations_.

Cornelia looks… well, she looks smug. And yes, Katherine thinks, she is probably well within her rights to. As far as she's concerned, she's just snatched the man of her dreams right out of Katherine's clutches. And Katherine feels… well, she feels relieved. Relieved that she doesn't have to worry about Darcy, relieved that they can go back to being friends and nothing more. That it's one less person for Jack to worry about – because she knows he does, bless him, constantly measuring himself up against Darcy and Arthur, as if it's a competition. As if there could ever be any competition.

Still, it's a shock. She hadn't actually expected Darcy to take her advice. And not so soon. He looked completely terrified of the notion at the Christmas party, yet it's not even been two months and they're engaged. Katherine swallows down several remarks about shotgun weddings that she knows that Jack would be very proud of but are still completely inappropriate (which, let's be honest, is probably why he'd be proud of them) and wishes them a good day. The couple walk away, parading themselves around the park in a victory lap.

"Are you alright, Katherine?" Constance asks. Katherine jolts out of her thoughts, looking over to her little sister, who is sliding into the opposite chair, the one which had been Jack's.

"Yes, I'm fine."

And she means it. Everybody has always thought that her and Darcy would end up together eventually, so it should hurt, shouldn't it? But it doesn't. Instead, all she can think about is how glad she is that she found Jack instead of settling for someone like Darcy. Because she's realised that there really isn't anybody else. Jack is the person that she wants by her side when she gets her article on the front page. She wants him to hold her after another ferocious argument with her father. She wants to wake up next to him every morning, and have children that he'll play with and ruffle the hair of, and she wants to sit under a blanket with him when they're old and grey and watch the sun go down. And she can't so much as imagine doing that with anybody else.

"Where's Jack?" Constance frowns, looking around, and Katherine suddenly doesn't feel very fine anymore.

Jack's that person. And she's just pushed him away.

"He had to go to work."

"Why didn't he say goodbye?" Edith chimes in, brushing the snow off her coat as she approaches.

At any other time, Katherine would be excited that Edith has finally taken to Jack, if not as much as Constance, then at least a little. At the moment, however, she feels a little bit like crying.

"He was in a rush. I'll make sure you get to see him again soon, okay?" _If he even wants to deal with me after all this._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry. Comments, as always, make my day :) xx


	26. Chapter 26

Honestly, David Jacobs seems to have some sort of sixth sense for turning up in Jack’s apartment at the worst possible times. 

When Jack gets in, he slams the front door hard enough for the plates in the kitchen cupboards to rattle against one another and is halfway through wrestling his coat off when he rounds the corner into the kitchen. Sat, perfectly serene and with his nose in a book, is David Jacobs. Jack nearly jumps two feet into the air.

“Hell, Dave, way to give a guy a heart attack.” Jack says, cursing under his breath. 

Davey looks up, completely unperturbed as he sets his book aside, and produces a large wooden cube from the floor beside him. He sets it neatly on the table, then smiles at Jack. “I have number blocks.”

Jack looks at him as if David has spontaneously sprouted a second head. “What you on about?”

“I’m goin’ to teach you your numbers.” Davey grins, beginning to unpack the wooden cubes. 

Each one has five panels with an opening at one end, the largest one being labelled with a colourful number ten, nine slotting neatly inside ten, eight slotting neatly inside nine, and so on and so forth. David is, honestly, feeling rather proud of himself for rooting these out of the apartment’s attic space, considering that his mother has got rid of most of Les’ old toys by this point. 

“Davey,” Jack sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose, “today is really not the day.”

“But it is! Katherine said you’d taken the day off and what do I always tell you about seizing the day?” The boy looks unbearably cheerful.

Jack is pretty sure that he can hear his bed calling out to him from the next room. Somehow, he doesn’t think that excuse is going to fly with Davey. 

“For the strike.” Jack scowls, leaning against the table and reaching out to pick up one of the cubes, turning the carved wood over in his fingers, examining it. “Not to learn useless numbers.”

“They’re not useless.” Davey plucks the cube back out of Jack’s hands and sets it back down in formation on the table. “You’re goin’ to need them sometime.” 

“I’s got you for that, ain’t I?” Jack shrugs. “Brains o’ the operation.”

David stares him down, one eyebrow raised. “Do you really want Katherine to know that you don’t know your numbers?”

And, well. After his outburst today, that would probably be enough to push her over the edge into realising quite how screwed up he is. Maybe it had been a mistake from the start, telling her about the Refuge. Maybe if he’d just kept his mouth shut, it would have been easier for her to love him. Maybe if he learns his numbers, Katherine might let him marry her. He could deal with most things if she would let him do that.

“Fine.” Jack throws his hands up in the air, using his foot to yank a chair out from where it’s tucked under table and slumping into it. “What’s I got to do?”

David, grinning, begins to stack the cubes inside one another, explaining as he goes. Then he has Jack repeat the numbers. And Jack is feeling pretty chuffed with himself, honestly, because he’s getting them all right. The whole system makes a sort of sense. The cube that Davey says is labelled two is a number two because there’s another cube inside it, so there are two cubes. Simple. The hard bit is getting himself to associate the number two to with the strange wiggly line that’s on the cube. Jack tries to remember it by thinking that it looks like the neck of a swan, when he starts a rough sketch of them, a sort of graceful curve. That helps, at least a little, until Davey starts presenting him with the cubes when they don’t have the other cubes in them. The only thing around to help him now are the weird symbols, and all of a sudden they don’t make so much sense anymore. It feels a little bit like he’s looking at them through the mist that rolls in off the Hudson River, like they’re shifting somehow. 

“This one.” Davey sets it on the table. 

It’s not easy, but Jack feels pretty confident that he recognises this one. “Nine.” 

David frowns. “Try again.” 

Is he not seeing what Jack is seeing? The number is, Jack thinks, quite clearly a nine. “‘S a nine, though.” He leans across the table to get a closer look. “‘S got a circle an’ a tail, like a balloon.”

“No, Jack,” David sighs, picking up another box and putting it next to the first one for comparison, “this is a nine. That’s a six.” 

And well, they look exactly the same. _Fuck._

Jack must look a bit vacant, because Davey produces another cube. “What about this?” 

“‘S a three.” Jack nods.

“Are you sure?”

“ _Yes_.” He repeats, irritated. Davey bites his lip. “What?” 

“It’s nothin’.” The other boy waves him away, removing the six and nine cubes from the table. 

“ _What?_ ” Jack snaps, reaching over and grabbing Davey’s wrist, halting the cubes’ journey.

It takes a solid thirty seconds for him to realise what he’s done, and another thirty for him to gather his wits enough to let go. David is looking at him like he’s lost his mind. Perhaps he has. Shooting Davey an apologetic glance, Jack lets his head hit the table with a thunk, relishing the ache that thrums through him.

“This is an eight, Jack.” Davey sounds guilty. 

“I ain’t gonna get this.” Jack shoves his chair back and gets to his feet.

He’s so done with all this nonsense. If he’s managed nineteen years without knowing his numbers, he reckons he can get through the next nineteen without knowing them either. This is just another opportunity for people like Davey and Katherine to feel superior, with their folks and their fancy educations. _I get it, I’m stupid,_ Jack almost snarls, biting his tongue so that it doesn’t lash the words against David, _so leave it well enough alone._

“Well, don’t give up now!” Davey turns in his chair, following Jack’s movements across the kitchen. “We’ve only just started.”

Jack opens his mouth to make some sort of cutting remark, but before he can get a word out the door to the apartment swings open and he hears a voice call, “Jack, baby?”

“Hey, Miss Medda.” He calls back, swallowing down his anger. 

“Well, hey David.” She greets the other boy, bustling into the kitchen with a wide smile that only dims the slightest bit when she sees Jack. “You look pretty tired, honey?” 

“Jus’ a long day.” Jack lies, shooting her a quick smile and yanking open the cupboard which holds the total of three mugs that he can call his own. “Coffee?” He turns, raising an eyebrow at Medda, reaching to grab one from the back of the cupboard. 

“Please!” Medda smiles, sinking into a chair and stretching out her legs. “Those girls of mine have been gettin’ their timin’s wrong all day.” 

Jack squints into the bottom of the mug and grimaces. Shows just how often he has had people over, at least recently, this layer of greyish dust that lines the cup. He turns to rinse it in the sink, making a mental note to clean up. Kath would be wrinkling her nose if she could see it.

Medda reaches across the table and picks up one of the cubes that are still in front of Davey. “What’s these?” 

Jack’s fingers twitch and the mug shatters against the bottom of the sink, porcelain splinters beaded with water and blood. A shard sticking out of Jack’s palm. 

“Ah, hell!” Jack curses, yanking the shard out of his hand and pressing it to his mouth to staunch the bleeding. He turns around to see Medda and Davey’s worried expressions. “‘M fine, jus’ clumsy.” He mumbles. Medda looks unconvinced and Jack refuses to meet her eyes, instead turning his gaze on David, sending a significant look his way. “You should put those away now, Davey.”

“We should keep goin’, Jack, you’ll get them eventually.” _Utterly oblivious._

Jack braces his hand on the countertop, white-knuckled. He’s never hit Davey, but boy would he like to, just at this moment. If Davey wasn’t so damn nice, so irritatingly well-meaning, he probably would. That, and Esther probably won’t ever smile at him like she wants him around again if he punches her son. 

“No, Dave, I won’t,” Jack grits out, “jus’ put ‘em away, wouldja?” 

He leans back into the corner of the sideboard, turning his eyes heavenward in a vain attempt to ignore the burning in his hand, cradling it against his stomach. There’s blood on his shirt, he notices, the thought a little distant. When had he last eaten? Strike that, when had he last _slept_? Maybe he shouldn’t be losing blood without anything to replace it. Jack shakes the thought away. He’s lost plenty more blood than this on less food and less sleep. Once, he’d woken up on the Refuge floor in a puddle of blood so large that he had thought that maybe he’d died and come back as a ghost. Jack thinks he’d be a pretty great ghost, freaking the daylights out of people. He wouldn’t mind being a ghost. 

Medda looks between the two boys, her gaze narrowing. “What’s goin’ on?” 

“I’m teachin’ Jack his numbers because he never learned.” Davey says, oh-so matter-of-factly, as if it isn’t the most mortifying thing Jack’s ever had said about him. 

That, at least, pulls him out of his sleep-deprived thought spiral. Cheeks flaring red, Jack pulls off his newsboy cap and hides his face in it. If they weren’t so high up in the apartment building, he’d have thrown himself out of the window before they even reached this juncture, but here he is, praying for the floor to swallow him up, or at the very least a hole to appear that he can crawl into. 

Medda’s eyes flick over to Jack as he returns his cap to his head. He looks anywhere but at her. “That’s real nice of you, Davey,” she says, slow and gentle, “but I don’t think Jack’s really in the right headspace for learnin’ right now. ‘S gettin’ kinda late, why don’t you head on home to your folks?”

David turns to Jack, who is still cradling his hand, backed up in the corner of the kitchen. Jack gives a slight nod, refusing to meet David’s eyes as he mumbles a thank you. Unsure of quite what’s just happened, but thoroughly confused, Davey gathers up the wooden cubes and shows himself out, Medda patting him on the shoulder as he goes. 

When the front door shuts, Medda rises from her seat and wanders over, arms spread wide and her hands open in something like supplication. “You okay to be touched, baby?” 

Jack doesn’t really know how to deal with somebody asking. Most people, he knows, don’t need to be asked before another person touches them. Most people can just deal with it. He’s never going to be most people. He nods, not quite meeting her eyes. Medda wraps him in a hug. Jack can’t get over this whole thing of people voluntarily touching him. 

“Talk to me.” 

He should make something up. He’s letting her get too close as it is. But he’s so, so tired. 

“I had a fight wi’ Kath. An’ I’s stupid.”

…

“I will not go with Mother.” Katherine states, folding her arms across her chest. “I shall find my own lodgings.”

From the armchair by the fire, her father sighs, squinting into the flames. The past few weeks have aged him several years. There’s no trace of the wild black hair Katherine remembers from her childhood anymore, only slicked back grey to match the deep lines that radiate across the skin around his eyes. Joseph Pulitzer is old, nearly blind, frail. 

“Katherine, that is not… appropriate, for a lady of your status.” 

_Oh, sod propriety._ Does he really think she’s going to ditch Jack? Her friends? Her job? Does he think that he’s going to summon her to France and that she’ll just drop everything to skip off to sample the waters in Aix-les-Bains? So what if that quack of a doctor says that time in Europe will aid her mother’s recovery? That’s no reason that she should have to leave too. Her father isn’t asking her brothers to go. Why her? 

“It is not appropriate for me to leave my job and go to France.” She snaps back. 

He winces at her voice. Noise bothers him now, in a way that it never used to. Migraines plague his days. His staff, at least, have learned to speak in hushed whispers, to refrain from disturbing him unnecessarily. When Hannah reads him his letters each morning, his own eyes too weak to do so, she speaks in a low, soft voice. It’s beyond his comprehension why his own daughter can’t afford him the same courtesy.

He sighs. “Let me help you find somewhere.” 

Katherine falters, eying her father suspiciously. “You want to help?”

He looks up in her direction, her form a cluster of blurred colours through milky eyes. “It seems the more I protest, the more you defy me. If I succumb, you will get bored. That’s how you work, Katherine. I raised you. And I work that way too.”

Lying in bed that night, Katherine wonders whether he’s right. She always has been more like her father than her mother. Lucy and her were unlike one another in that respect; Lucy had inherited their mother’s personality, charming, gracious, ladylike. Katherine had always taken after Joseph, his drive, his determination, his fiery temper. All the things she prides herself on, her ambition, her talent, her independence, they come from her father. They’re all the things he hates most about her. 

Katherine shuts her eyes tight. She’s not like her father, she can’t be. She has things that her father doesn’t. She can see past appearances to the good in people. She’s interested in truth, in honesty, not just profit. But she pushes people away like her father does, doesn’t she?

His cloudy eyes hover above her, set into the canopy of the Hotel Netherland’s four poster bed. She tries to blink them away, but they just blink back at her. Is that how she will end up? Alone? Blind? A victim of her own making? 

Is that who she is already?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry, nothing's fixed yet, but it's on its way. In the meantime have these important angsty plot scenes. Pulitzer's health conditions (blindness, headaches) were something that he was majorly struggling with at this time. Kate Pulitzer was also sent to Aix-les-Bains by her doctor to aid her health. Look at me with my historical accuracy! Your comments have been making me super duper happy - please keep them coming! x


	27. Chapter 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What is this? Two updates? In one day? Yeah, so I had a panic attack earlier today which spiralled into me worrying that this chapter was utter shit and my character development is also shit and that everybody else will hate it as much as I do. So I'm posting it today, in the vague hope that the act of posting it prevents me from continuing to worry about it. Enjoy!

The next day, Katherine emerges from her office determined to head straight over to Jack’s apartment and grovel for his forgiveness. She’s spent the entire night tossing and turning and feeling like a thoroughly awful human being, spending the day retyping the same sentence twenty-six different ways only to cut it out of the article entirely. Jack, it turns out, beats her to the whole grovelling thing. 

She sees him as soon as she steps out of the door, scuffing his feet against the pavement and holding a bunch of flowers. Jack has clearly never held a bunch of flowers before in his life. He holds the flowers like a new father holds a baby – not quite sure which way is up and frantically trying to obey his wife’s instructions to support the head. 

“I’s sorry.” He says, blurting the words out without meeting her eyes, his free hand rubbing at the back of his neck. “I was tired an’ angry an’ I overreacted an’ I shouldn’t have run away an’ I know that I’s really bad at this whole relationship thing but I promise I’s gonna do better an’-“ 

It’s so painfully rehearsed that Katherine wants to kiss him. So, she does, because really, it’s her favourite way of shutting him up. Who cares if they’re in public? Jack is so blindsided by the press of her lips against his that he doesn’t even manage to manoeuvre the flowers out of his way so that he can hold her properly before she’s pulled away and rested her forehead against his. It’s hard to think, with her hands on either side of his face like this, the way that she’s touching him, the fact that she _wants_ to touch him. 

“I was insecure and said stuff that was stupid about things that have hurt you more than I can ever understand and I’m sorry.”

“Okay.” He nods, wide-eyed, bringing himself back under control and one hand up to twirl a loose strand of her hair around his finger. The gesture makes her feel like a little girl, but it’s somehow not patronising. It just feels… caring. Like he’s taking care of her. And if there’s one thing Jack’s good at, despite the aspersions cast by her family as to his ability to do it, it’s taking care of her. “Is we okay? Now, I means?” 

“We’re always okay.” She tells him, emphatic, as she moves away from him. Katherine is aware, all too aware, of the fact that there are people walking past. It’s difficult to stand how bereft he looks though, so she softens her voice. “I was scared you were done though. With us.”

“Are you kiddin’? Ace, ‘s jus’ a row. People have rows. You says sorry an’ you moves on.” He says it like it’s obvious. Then his face falls, stricken. “This was jus’ a row, right? ‘F it’s not I’d have never have walked away-“

“It was.” Katherine says quickly, reaching out to grab his free hand, hoping that’s enough to persuade both of them that it’s okay. Jack flinches. Her heart half breaks. It’s been months since he’s flinched away from her touch. She’s never seen him this hurt, so broken over something she’s said. She’s going to spend the rest of her life trying to atone for it, if he’ll let her. “I’m not used to fights just… being something that you say sorry for and move on from. But it was. Just a row. I was mean. I’m sorry.”

It’s true. Sure, she’s had plenty of rows in her time. Her father, her mother, her sisters. But saying sorry? That’s only ever something that she does with Jack. If you say sorry as a Pulitzer, it’s weakness. Only losers say sorry. If you say sorry, then you lose the game. But she can say sorry to Jack. She’ll say sorry for the rest of her life, if she has to. 

Jack nods, tension draining from his shoulders. “We ain’t always gonna agree, Ace. For goodness sake, ‘s us.” He chuckles a little, squeezing her hand. “So long as you still wants me-“

“Of course.” _How could he think anything else?_ “Of course, I want you.”

“Then I ain’t leavin’. You ain’t gotta be scared o’ that. I jus’ – I didn’t want to blow up at you.” Jack bites his lip. Here he goes again, screwing everything up. Katherine looks up into his face, confused, eyes begging him to help her understand. For once, he gets the message. “‘S hard sometimes. To react… the way I oughta. I needed a breather. Didn’t wanta say somethin’ I’d regret.” 

Katherine nods, taking a deep breath. _Come on, Katherine. You trade in words. They’re your thing. The words are your friends. Find them._ “That makes sense. Do you think that you could try to tell me that next time, before you walk away?”

Jack scrunches his nose, then nods. “I can try.” 

Okay, she can work with that. “Is there something I can do? To help you?”

Jack isn’t too sure what to do with that question. He’d come here ready to apologise, to win her back after they’d both been stupid but he’d been stupider. He doesn’t really know what to do with this. Is this what Medda is talking about when she says words like _healthy communication_? Jack winces, but finally ventures: “You said – Medda, she said you didn’t mean it, that you was jus’ sad, but that place, Kath, it-” He breaks off, looking away. Jack looks so broken, in a way that she’s never seen. It scares her. She did that. 

“Hey.” She steps back into his space, placing both hands on his face, forcing him to look at her. “You trusted me with something big and I messed up. I’m sorry. I was sad, but I shouldn’t have said what I did. I can never understand what you went through, Jack. I just want to take it away from you.”

She just wants to _take it away from him_. Like it isn’t etched into every fibre of his being, mapped out in a thousand scars across his back. Like he wouldn’t be a different person entirely without it. But he knows, he knows that isn’t what she means. She’s trying to understand, damnit, and so is he, and they’re not perfect but they’re trying to understand. 

Jack nods, tight and jerky, closing his eyes and just trying to focus on the way her hands feel against his skin. “I don’t wanta fight like that again. Could you try an’ tell me what you’s feelin’, instead? ‘Cos you’s real complicated sometimes, Ace, an’ I ain’t a mind-reader.”

Complicated is an understatement. Jack is perfectly aware that he’s never going to be as quick off the mark as Katherine, as nimble-minded, as smart. That’s okay though, he loves her because she’s cleverer than him, not in spite of it. He likes hearing her talk about the things that excite her, the way she jumps from topic to topic, making connections he’d never see if he stared right at them for a hundred years. She’s complicated. And he wants to spend the rest of his life figuring her out. 

“Sure.” She smiles at him. Jack feels as though he got the answer right. “So… flowers?” Katherine asks, twining their fingers together as they set off walking, peering down at the bunch of pink hydrangeas that he’s thrust into her hands. 

“You like ‘em?” 

Looking up into his face, so open and honest and hopeful, Katherine just cannot bring herself to tell him that hydrangeas communicate _heartlessness and frigidity_ in the language of flowers. She tries not to let herself think about how fitting their meaning is considering the way that she spoke to him yesterday. “They’re very nice. They’re just… new.”

“Medda says they’s important.” Jack nods, decisive and a little bit pleased. “She says I needs to listen to your feelin’s an’ buy you flowers an’ then you won’t be mad at me no more.”

“I wasn’t mad _at you_.” She winces. “I was just mad generally… but the flowers are lovely. Thank you.”

“You’s welcome. I dunno if they’s the right ones, but they’s pink an’ you look real nice in pink.”

“I barely ever wear pink.” She laughs. 

“You was wearin’ pink the first time I met’cha.” Jack says, only half there, his attention caught for a moment by a passing newsie. He’s one of Spot’s lot. The kid has some cheek going after Henry when his boys are on Manhattan’s turf. Jack will have to have a chat with Spot about keeping his boys in line. Race clearly hasn’t put his foot down enough. 

It takes Katherine a moment to realise what he’s said. “You remember what I was wearing?” 

Jack turns a little bit red (which should not be as adorable as it is, Katherine reminds herself) and shrugs, fiddling with his cap. “‘Course I do. You’s pretty hard to forget, Ace. Best reporter in New York City.”

“You are too good to be real, Jack Kelly.”

She looks at him with something like wonder. Jack doesn’t know why, or how, but it’s the best thing he’s ever had, she’s the best thing he’s ever had, so he’ll take it. He honestly has no idea what she sees in him, but if he just gets to hold her hand for the rest of his life he reckons he could probably be okay with that. 

“You wanta have dinner at mine tonight?” He asks, out of nowhere, then remembers quite how little he has in the cupboard. “‘S jus’ eggs, but-“

“Yes, please.” 

_People have rows._ Like it’s a fact of life. _People have rows._ She shouldn’t have expected anything less, being with Jack. He’s exactly as stubborn as she is, exactly as headstrong, exactly as angry. He loves her exactly as much. _People have rows._ So, this isn’t the end of it. They’re going to have more rows; they’re going to have to keep working at this thing. One fall-out and reunion isn’t going to heal any scars for either of them. Those things take time. But Katherine reckons she can keep working at this. When she’s working with Jack, it doesn’t feel so much like hard work at all. 

They’ve gone through too much, the two of them, to give up now. 

…

Ten minutes in, and Katherine has decided that cooking might be the most attractive thing she’s ever seen Jack do. And she finds him attractive all the bloody time. 

It’s domestic in a way that’s both nostalgic and unfamiliar. None of her family memories take place in a kitchen, she’s never seen either of her parents or, indeed, any of her siblings, cook. She rather thinks it’s something that she could get used to, watching Jack move around the kitchen with quiet, stable confidence so unlike the bravado he projects around his boys, collar unbuttoned and shirtsleeves rolled up, relaxed and open. Jack cooks like he paints, assured and messy and delighted. 

“‘F you wanted a show you coulda jus’ asked.” Her eyes fly up to his face and he’s grinning, wicked and cheeky in that way he always does. 

Katherine can feel the blush rising in her cheeks, that she’s been caught staring. “I just can’t believe you’re mine.” 

The grin vanishes. He hadn’t been expecting her to say _that_. “Best believe it, Ace.” Jack smiles, soft and private. “Now get over ‘ere an’ mind the toast.” 

That’s how Katherine finds herself staring down into a pan at four slices of bread as they sizzle menacingly. She’s never been one to back down from a challenge – but cooking? There’s lots of potential burns for someone of her limited experience and it’s a prospect that she decidedly doesn’t relish. 

“Cornelia’s engaged.” She tells him, attempting to calm her nerves. 

Okay…” Jack frowns, not looking up from where he’s whisking eggs with a slightly bent fork, “goin’ to need a bit more than that, sweetheart.”

“Darcy proposed to Cornelia.”

“Darcy proposed to that bitch who called you disfigured?” He looks over at her, eyebrows raised, “I thought he had better taste.”

“Me too.” She huffs. “It’s good, in a way, because it’s just cemented that I made the right choice, but everybody will expect me to care, because they were all expecting Darcy and I to get married. I’m just dreading all the comments.” 

Jack knows that the way his heart soars at the words _right choice_ is stupid, but he can’t help but feel a little warmer. He covers it with a gentle laugh. “I ain’t bein’ funny, but we ain’t never gonna be a conventional couple. You knows that, right?”

“I wouldn’t want it any other way.” 

She thinks she sees him stifle a smile at that, even as he turns away from her to pour the eggs into a second pan, which is promptly placed on the stove beside the bread. Everything prepared, Jack shifts closer to her and leans down, pressing sweet, open-mouthed kisses to the side of her neck. Katherine can’t help but lean her head to one side, closing her eyes against the waning sunlight that filters in through the window. It’s wonderfully, terrifyingly intimate.

“Me neither.” He’s speaking so quietly that she almost has to strain to hear him. “So, the way I sees it, ‘s all worked out for the best. See, with Brooks, an’ now Darcy, outta the way, I gets you all to myself. Every little bit o’ you.” He punctuates each of those last words with a kiss, working his way down her neck and fiddling with the buttons of her blouse until he has access to her collar bone. 

“You had all of me already.” She rolls her eyes, but she doesn’t push his head away. She’s always known that Jack has a clever mouth with all his witty banter, but she’d never known that he could do things like _this_. “You know I’ve never been interested-“

“Yeah, but now the rest o’ the world knows it too.” As if to prove his point, Jack sucks a love bite onto her skin, teeth grazing across the tender flesh. He loves to see his marks on her, something possessive inside of him wanting the world to know that she’s his. Of course, she’ll cover it up with a high collared blouse until it fades, he knows this. If she didn’t, after all, she’d probably lose her job, being unmarried and all that. But still. He knows it’s there. She knows it’s there. “They can see that you’s all mine.”

“Yours.” She sighs, eyes closed, reaching out to stroke up and down his arms. Jack with his shirtsleeves rolled up, those strong forearms – it does something to her. Something about how safe he makes her feel. 

“Mm.” He hums into her skin and she feels it, like a shiver across her whole body. “Say it again.”

“I’m yours, Jack Kelly.” She can feel his smile against her skin, but he doesn’t reply. Katherine huffs. “Now is the part when you’re supposed to tell me that you’re mine.” 

“Well,” Jack looks up at her with eyes alight, pulling away a little to tilt his head to the side in mock thoughtfulness, “there is this other girl…”

“ _Jack!_ ” Katherine cries, swiping the newsboy cap off his head and whacking his shoulder with it. 

Shameless as ever, Jack just grins, catching his cap from out of her fingers and fitting it onto her head, pulling the peak down so it covers her eyes. “I’s jus’ teasin’, love.” Cheeky boy. She reaches up to pull it down at the back so that she can pout up at him. 

“You better be.”

“I promise.” He grins wider. 

Katherine goes to grin back, but then she smells burning. “Oh! The toast!”

The speed at which Katherine pulls away from him leaves Jack feeling almost as though he’s got whiplash, hands scrambling for purchase like the very first time she kissed him. He’s never seen someone look so dejected over burnt toast. 

He presses his lips together, repressing a laugh. “Is this you tryna tell me I’s goin’ to be doin’ all the cookin’ once we’s married?”

Immediately, he feels terrible. Katherine looks unbearably guilty about the whole thing, staring down at the pan in her hands like she’s murdered a small animal in it, not just managed to char four slices of bread. 

“Ace, ‘s goin’ to take more than some burnt toast to change my mind on this.” Jack says, prying the pan from her hands and extracting the burnt pieces to replace them with a new slices. 

“‘Sides. Toast,” Jack lifts one slice up, dangling it between them before bringing it to his mouth, “is toast.” 

She cringes at the noise it makes when Jack crunches into the blackened toast. Katherine’s never eaten burned toast. When it appears on the table at home, it’s just… done. Golden brown, buttered, hot. Toast like it’s supposed to be. 

“What I don’t understand,” she complains, squashing down a lurking feeling of inadequacy, “is how you got so good at this?”

Jack shrugs, holding the piece of toast between his teeth as he stirs the eggs. “‘S what happens when you ain’t got a personal chef.” 

It’s a bit of a slap in the face, but she figures she probably deserves it. When she doesn’t respond, Jack turns around. His face softens and he tosses the half-eaten toast onto the countertop.

“Hey, I ain’t bein’ mean, Ace. ‘S jus’ the truth. Y’learn pretty quick if it’s the only way you’s eatin’ somethin’ warm. I’s _glad_ that you don’t know.” 

He reaches out, a hand extended toward her. The gesture reminds her of the hand-shaking that goes on in church. The sign of peace. She takes his hand. The expression on his face is totally worth it. 

“Here,” he tugs her back over to the stovetop, “come try this.”

He puts his hands on her hips to shift her in front of him. She wonders if every man has hands like Jack’s, calloused and strong and gentle, and if she just hasn’t noticed. Surely not. This would be fine, of course, except he _keeps them there_ , mumbling instructions until she’s flipping the toast and stirring the eggs, if not professionally, then at least adequately. It’s a strange sort of feeling when he moves away to stand beside her, somewhere between elation that he thinks she’s not going to screw it up and bitter disappointment that his hands aren’t on her anymore. 

Still, she hopes that this might be what it’s like. Katherine is pretty sure she could be more than content if this is what happens every evening for the rest of her life. Her and Jack, in the kitchen. Cooking, kissing like schoolchildren. He smiles at her like she’s the only person in the world. 

It’s not long, however, before he’s touching her again, moving back behind her and snaking his arms around her waist, resting his chin on the top of her head. It should irritate her, she knows, the way he lords their height difference over her. Katherine resists the urge to roll her eyes; he’s so predictable. It’s impossible to deny the pleasantly squirmy feeling it generates in her belly, though, when he puts his hands on her. It doesn’t seem to matter where they are, he always needs to be touching her, somehow, his knee resting lightly against hers under the table, his hand on her waist, her arm hooked through his. It’s almost as if he thinks she’ll disappear if he doesn’t have hold of her. And she doesn’t need it, naturally, it’s possessive and protective in a way that she ought to resent. She doesn’t though. It makes her feel a little bit like a schoolgirl in the same way it does when he sucks a bruise onto her collarbone, proud and preening at being marked up a bit. For Jack, she’s realised, touch is just how he shows her that he cares.

He dips his head, pressing a kiss behind her ear. Then another. And another, right where he’s learned she’s most sensitive, the spot close to her jawline that feels like feather on her skin. She reaches up to swat at him, flicking a tea towel at his head, even as she feels the trembling of suppressed laughter ripple through him. 

“Mr. Kelly,” she purses her lips in mock irritation, “I am trying to pay attention to the cooking lesson.”

“You criticisin’ my teachin’ methods, Miss Plumber?” His voice is a low rumble in her ear. 

“Never your teaching methods. Merely your motives.” 

“I’s got better things to do than go explainin’ my motives to you.” She can hear the smirk in his voice, a challenge.

It could be construed as innocent, it honestly could, the way that she presses herself back against him, the line of her back tracing every contour of his solid chest. Katherine hears him curse, low and filthy, under his breath, and it feels like a victory. 

“Oh, really?” She asks, like butter wouldn’t melt, flushed and pliable and pleased against him. He hesitates, behind her, unsure if she means it, and Katherine suppresses another eye roll. _Come on, Jack_ , she thinks, _you know me better than that_. And then he catches on, almost as if he’s heard her. 

“Yeah,” he says in her ear, and she feels the rasp of his voice in her fingertips, “one real specific thing.” 

His arm around her waist tightens then, hauling her impossibly closer, and the fingers of his other hand come up to guide her lips to his. It’s an awkward position, both of them craning their necks, but it’s too good to give up, Jack kissing her like this, warm and insistent. When he breaks away, she feels utterly wrecked and he – well, he looks far too put together, smirking at her like that.

“Eggs are done.” Jack takes the pan from her, casual as anything, and wanders over to plate up the food as if nothing even happened. 

It takes the front door opening and closing for Katherine to pull herself together again. Crutchie appears in the doorway, shrugging off his jacket. It’s new, Katherine notes, and she wonders if Jack bought it for him or if it was his first purchase with his new salary. 

“Hey, Crutchie, how was work?” Jack asks, not bothering to turn around but pulling another plate out of the cupboard and holding it up in question.

“Please!” Crutchie grins, bright and wide and shining, getting as close to a skip as he can get as he crosses the room to stand beside Jack. “Mr. Hodges said I was doin’ real well an’ that I was workin’ hard.”

Jack doesn’t answer, not in words, at least, but he puts the plate down on the sideboard and slings an arm around Crutchie’s shoulders, ruffling the boy’s hair. Katherine likes to think that she speaks the language of Jack Kelly now, at least a little. That touch; it means _I’m proud of you_. It means _good job, kid_. It means _I love you, you dumb crip_. 

Crutchie seems to hear the same thing, though it goes unspoken, because he looks just so damn happy when he turns to look at Katherine. “Did Jack tell you they’s got a fire in my office, Kath?” He grins. “Benny set me right by it so’s my leg don’t get cold.” 

“That’s great, Crutchie. What kind of thing have they had you working on?”

Jack looks over at her and smiles, over Crutchie’s head, and Katherine remembers the other meaning of hydrangeas, the ones that sit in the chipped glass on the table. _Gratitude for being understood._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I did read several articles on the Victorian language of flowers for this chapter. You are welcome for all of the information you never needed to know about hydrangeas. 
> 
> Also, I cried A LOT writing this, and it still isn’t right. I wanted to show that Jack and Katherine have a real relationship, where hurtful things are said but that doesn’t mean the end. I once had the most awful row, where I thought I would never speak to the other person again, but when you love someone that isn’t an option. They're the person I’m closest to in the entire world now. I don’t know whether that comes across in this chapter, but it what I’m trying to say, at least. I’m really very unhappy with it, so if I’ve done it poorly, please tell me how to fix it in the comments xx


	28. Chapter 28

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for your lovely comments and well wishes on the last chapter. I tried to write individual responses but got very emotional, so please accept this chapter as thanks instead. It comes from a much better headspace - it's a little bit sad, a little bit funny, and a lot exciting. I can't stress enough how much I appreciate each and every single one of you.

Katherine loves the idea of living independently at Miss Morton's boarding house for young ladies right up until her father drops her off there and she gets handed the list of rules.

She is handed them by none other than Miss Morton herself, a dour, stern woman whose straggly grey hair is pulled back into a severe bun beneath a white lace cap that Katherine is pretty sure can't be less than forty years old. Miss Morton herself, though, is even older than her cap – if she's a day under seventy Katherine will eat her hat. Or Miss Morton's.

The rules go on for an entire sheet of paper, neatly written in sweeping cursive. It's the handwriting of somebody who has nothing better to do than to practice their handwriting. With each one, Katherine's heart drops a little more.

**1\. Curfew is at 7pm, unless evidence can be provided for attending a particular society event.**

(Somehow, Katherine doesn't think Race forging an invite so she can spend an evening at the newsies' lodgehouse is quite going to cut it.)

**2\. Every lodger is required to be present for prayers at 8pm each evening.**

**3\. Lodgers must have retired to their rooms at 10pm each evening, after which time the gas lights will be turned off.**

On and on and it goes, until:

**35\. Gentlemen callers may only be received in the parlour for afternoon tea at 3pm on Saturdays. Visitation by gentlemen at any other time and in any other room is strictly prohibited.**

All of a sudden, Katherine has an inkling of why her father wanted to help her find somewhere.

Her father certainly seems to be taking much less of an interest in her sisters' living situations, that's for sure. Constance, it is decided, is too young to be separated from their mother. A stately woman of fifty or so is engaged to be both a governess to Constance and a companion to Kate during their stay in France. Edith is less lucky.

Edith is selected to follow in Herbert's footsteps and is to be shipped off to boarding school. It takes Katherine a good deal of badgering, but she finally persuades Miss Morton to give her special dispensation to spend the night away from the boarding house. Edith is a little piece of work, most of the time, but Katherine doesn't want her spending the night before the biggest and strangest trip of her life alone.

They don't say much, sat in Edith's hotel room the night before the journey with the trunk set by the bed. In the low light, it looks like a crouching goblin, sinister and shadowy, a third presence in a room of two, lurking and impossible to ignore. Edith, Katherine thinks, looks like Rosie, Constance's doll. Her face, still smooth and perfect with the high forehead and the bright eyes of childhood, dressed up in adult clothes, in a dress the style of which is too womanly, too elegant, for a child's body. Because she is a child still, really. Thirteen seems too young to be setting off on a train halfway across the country on her own. Edith's own doll is nowhere to be seen. When asked if she has packed it, Edith looks at Katherine with something like derision and tells her that she's too old for such things.

Katherine wonders, for the first time, whether this whole upheaval has been harder on her sister than she's realised. It's been a tumultuous couple of years, with the fire and Lucy and her, too, really. Because though she's technically been living in the family home, it probably hasn't seemed like it. Katherine asks her sister to write to her, cheerful and bright and hopeful as she can muster, telling her that she always wanted to go to boarding school (she didn't) and that it sounds like it's going to be great fun (it doesn't). Edith looks at her like she isn't seeing anything at all, like she's looking straight through Katherine and out of the hotel room window.

"If I have time."

"Hm?"

"I'll write if I have time, but it looks like I'll be rather busy."

It feels like going back a decade, getting into a bed beside her sister. Katherine's always had her own bedroom, but she and Lucy used to sneak across the hallway almost every night as children so that they could hold hands under the covers and whisper to one another in the dark. She can almost pretend that Edith is Lucy, sometimes, like now, in the low light of the bedside lamp. A few more years and they'll be identical.

When she reaches out under the covers for Edith's hand, sweaty palm groping across the sheets, searching, Edith doesn't grip her hand like Lucy used to, like she was never going to let go. But Edith doesn't pull away either. Katherine thinks that she can live with that. Never letting go is a lie. Not pulling away, well. It's something.

Edith doesn't cry when Katherine walks her to the station the next morning and gets her settled in a carriage. She doesn't wave out the window as the train pulls away, though Katherine stands on the platform, waiting for her to, until the train is right out of sight. Edith never cries. Katherine does, later, into Jack's shoulder. He runs his hands up and down her back, endless, repetitive, like the train on the tracks, and tells her that it's all going to be okay. She almost believes him.

…

It takes Katherine a full three weeks to convince Jack to come and visit for afternoon tea. Bless his soul, he's been trying hard for her, she knows, cutting back his overtime hours to snatch up a little time here and there between his shifts and her curfew. It's not enough though, and whilst the other girls are nice about it, it's really rather disheartening to be the only one sat at afternoon tea without a suitor. She can't help but feel that the others suspect her of fabricating her beau in order to cover up the fact that she can't get one on account of her scar. Plus, it usually means that, as the tables seat two people each, she always ends up opposite Miss Morton, forced to make polite conversation for a full hour with quite possibly the most boring woman in the world. They've spoken for a full twenty minutes about appropriate patterns for lace doilies and Katherine was genuinely starting to consider strangling herself with one by the time she managed to escape. It's taken her assuring him that _no, your everyday suit is just fine, you don't have to get dressed up_ and promising him that she'll let him paint her next month if he'll just come along.

And though she knows he'd never break a promise to her, there's a certain triumph when he saunters in at exactly three pm on the last Saturday in March. He's one of the first ones to arrive and the girls all follow him with their eyes. Katherine feels all sorts of smug as their eyes rake over him. And who can blame them? _Yes,_ she wants to get up on her chair and say, _he's mine_.

Because he is. Due to her new, stricter schedule, Katherine has been making a habit of bringing him lunch. He skips his morning break to have fifteen minutes with her before he goes off to have lunch with his colleagues. He always offers to stay with her, of course, but Katherine adores that he has finally got a friend in Daniel that he isn't constantly having to help out of some scrape or another, that he can just be himself around, so she doesn't let him.

And slowly, slowly, he's opening up to her again. It's quiet and gradual and neither of them acknowledge it, but he's handing her drawings, sometimes, of the Refuge, like those first ones she discovered up on his penthouse all those months ago. He doesn't quite seem to have the words – though Katherine does, and she wants to rip Snyder to shreds with them – but his illustrations tell her everything she needs to know. She knows how much it's taking for him to let her in, so she tucks each one away safely to look at when she starts to take him for granted.

Through all this, Katherine is just starting to get better at sensing the discomfort underneath the veneer of Jack's confidence. But today, it's rolling off him in waves as he mumbles a greeting, eyes flicking between Katherine and Miss Morton as he sinks down into the chair opposite her.

Miss Morton is at the table in the centre of the room like a guard in Bentham's panopticon. She's sat just far enough away for it to feel as though she can't hear anybody's conversation, but close enough so that she can turn and hiss at any girl so much as thinking about the vaguest sniff of impropriety. Katherine has been on the receiving end of several tongue-lashings already. One particularly memorable occasion came after she arrived a whole three minutes late for curfew as a result of Jack pressing her up against a wall and kissing her until her knees went weak. When she'd lamented the circumstance to him the next day, he hadn't even had the decency to look embarrassed.

At least he looks afraid of Morton now – and who wouldn't be; she's a bloody dragon. Morton's glare, aimed just above Jack's eyebrows, rests on him for a full minute before he clocks what she's annoyed about and snatches his newsboy cap off his head. When his eyes skim over Katherine though, there's a hint of amusement tugging at the corners of his mouth. She glares at him, staring him down as she pours the tea into dainty china teacups, his first, then hers. If he makes one comment about the hideous concoction of ruffles that Miss Morton forced over her head, calling it a tea dress, she will scream.

"I'm as uncomfortable here as you look." Katherine says, thrusting his teacup at him.

Jack looks vaguely startled, but manages to gather enough presence of mind to take the tea. "I ain't –" he starts, then grimaces, "- yeah, okay."

Taking a sip of his tea, and, naturally, because the cups are so damn small, downing half of it, he takes a look around the room. Pink wallpaper, plates hung on the walls with pictures painted in the middle of them. What kind of person, Jack wonders, hangs plates on the walls instead of eating off them? His eyes, however, as always, return to Katherine, catching her irritated expression as she slouches rebelliously.

"Y'see that girl over there, in the blue dress?" Jack mutters, leaning forward across the table with a glint in his eye.

Katherine turns round immediately, eyes searching and irritation gone, and Jack feels all kinds of pleased with himself for pulling her out of her funk. Her gaze lights on Lillian, who is wearing a navy blue dress and making stilted conversation with a young man named Albert. Albert is a recent addition to the rotation of suitors, as far as Katherine can gather, and he says things like _exponential growth in the stock market_. Katherine wonders how anybody survives without a Jack Kelly.

She turns back to Jack, raising her eyebrows. He grins. "I bet'cha a dollar she's gonna slap 'im within the next ten minutes."

"Deal." Katherine says, the corners of her mouth twitching.

She flicks her eyes over to Miss Morton, then spits into her palm and holds her hand out for him to shake. Jack is struck by the sudden realisation that it's exactly this attitude that made him fall in love with her. He follows suit.

Miss Morton has run this particular lodging house for young ladies for twenty years. She's dealt with all sorts of improprieties, fornication, out-of-wedlock pregnancy, women with ruined reputations. And never once, in all of those twenty years, has she ever had to deal with a rabble-rousing journalist and her orphaned, union leader boyfriend spit-shaking in the middle of her highly civilised afternoon tea. Honestly? She's a bit lost. It's probably quite lucky, then, that her eyes have barely had chance to bulge out of their sockets at the sight before her when there's a crack of skin on skin and Lillian flees the room, leaving Albert, with a large red handprint on his stubbly cheek, to slope out, alone. Miss Morton is quick to follow, pursuing Lillian towards her room. The other couples in the room exchange looks and hushed whispers.

Katherine rounds on Jack, halfway between a gasp and a grin. "How did you-"

"He kissed another girl outside." Jack cuts her off, sinking back into his chair, legs spread and shoulders relaxed, looking incredibly smug.

She pouts. "That's playing dirty, Kelly."

"'S no rule against it." He grins, making a beckoning motion with his hand. "Pay up, Plumber."

Katherine scowls, pursing her lips and looking down at her - well, it can barely be called an outfit – with disdain. "You know as well as I do that there's nowhere to put a purse in this ridiculous confection."

Jack looks her up and down, wolfish eyes skimming over her, and Katherine is all of a sudden perfectly certain that how warm she feels has absolutely nothing to do with the obscene amount of fabric which went into the construction of her dress. Pushing his tongue into the hollow of his cheek, Jack shoots her a wicked look.

"Guess you's goin' to hafta find some other way to pay me then, ain't you?"

Katherine glances at the door, still lolling open from where Miss Morton had set off in pursuit of Lillian, then looks back at him, something (something which Jack is sure is very, very dangerous) shining in her eyes. "How's this?"

She grins at him, reaching across the table to take hold of his tie and pull him toward her, her other hand tangling in his curls as she pulls him into a bruising kiss. The fingers carding through his hair tug at it, just a little, and it's enough for him to groan into her mouth.

"Miss Pulitzer!"

Jack pulls away from her like he's been burned, only to see Miss Morton standing, returned, in the doorway. He's pretty sure he can see steam coming out of her ears. The other couples in the room turn around, craning their necks surreptitiously to get a glance at what new scandal has erupted in the far corner of the room. Jack sits back in his chair, hands in his lap like an admonished schoolboy. Katherine, thoroughly unrepentant, meets the woman's disapproving stare head on, matching her eye contact until Miss Morton has once again seated herself at the centre table.

When she finally releases them from her beady stare, Katherine looks back at Jack and realises that his shoulders are shaking. He's not looking down at his hands in his lap because he's ashamed or embarrassed. It's because he's bloody well _laughing_. She nudges his foot with her own under the table and he looks up, grinning, to wink at her, the shameless boy, still shaking with silent laughter. Katherine has to clap her hand over her mouth to stifle her own giggles, but doesn't quite manage to clamp down on a snort, one loud enough for Miss Morton's eyes to swivel back to monitor her.

 _Outrageous_ , Jack mouths at her, and she's inclined to agree. It takes them quite a while to recover.

Perfectly aware of the steely gaze currently being levelled at her, and also perfectly unaffected by it, Katherine slumps back in her armchair, letting her head flop backwards and groaning. "I can't stand this place. _Yes, suitors may call for afternoon tea on Saturdays at three._ How delightful!"

When Jack doesn't respond, she raises her head to look at him, properly look at him, for the first time since their illicit kiss. She hasn't been able to, until now, for fear of breaking into fits of laughter again. When she does, though, it's only to see amusement in his eyes and his hair deliciously mussed. _I did that_ , she thinks, remembering the way his hair feels between her fingers. However, his amusement is something that she probably ought to deal with, so Katherine tells him, in no uncertain terms, that it isn't funny.

She rolls her eyes. "Oh shut up."

Jack holds his hands up in surrender. "I ain't sayin' nothin'."

She glares at him a little more, no malice in it, before reaching over to the tiered cake stand and selecting the largest cake on there. Around her, the girls are selecting tiny triangular sandwiches and the daintier cakes. _Sod that_. She needs sustenance if she's going to get through even another day in this lodging house and she is, luckily, with Jack, who is never happier than when the people he loves are eating. Katherine's taken one bite out of it (a thoroughly unladylike bite which earns her yet another glare from Miss Morton) when her eyes catch on Jack again and she realises that he's staring at her cake like he's never seen anything like it before. And, to be fair to him, he probably hasn't.

"Hey," she gives him a small smile, "you can have cake too, you know."

"Yeah?"

He looks… well, he looks almost shy, the way he's sort of peering up at her from under his eyelashes – which are criminally beautiful, for a man, in Katherine's opinion. It's like he doesn't quite believe her, like he thinks if he reaches out to take even the slightest morsel then he'll have handcuffs slapped on him. And, truly, she can't really blame him, after everything he's gone through. Still, Jack waits until Miss Morton turns her gaze away from them to survey the rest of the room before he reaches out and takes the smallest cake off the stand. Old habits die hard, Katherine supposes. When he bites into it, though, tentative and mouse-like, he gains the expression of a man who's died and gone to heaven.

"Hell, Katherine," Jack says, looking between her and the cake as if he can't decide which one he's more in love with, "why'd you complain 'bout livin' here?"

And, well, Katherine knows exactly what she's doing for his next birthday. "Cake is a poor substitute for freedom." Jack makes a face which implies that he fundamentally disagrees with her assessment. Sighing, Katherine leans back again and finishes the last of her own cake. "You better ask me to marry you soon and get me out of this place, that's all I can say."

Jack, who has just placed the last of his cake in his mouth, stops chewing and stares at her. Katherine's heart drops out of her chest and through the floor. They've talked about it, of course they have, Jack has always made it clear that that's his intention and she's known the seriousness of that since she overheard Crutchie and Davey talking about the ring. However, basically all-out telling him to propose is a rather different thing. As is evident from the dumbstruck, mildly terrified expression that is currently on his face. She wants to curl up in a hole and die.

"Oh, Jack – I didn't mean-"

"D'you want me to ask?" He cuts her off, swallowing his cake down only half-chewed.

Katherine ploughs on, utterly mortified. "Jack, I know that you're saving and that it's really soon, I didn't mean to put on any pressure-"

" _Katherine._ " Jack interrupts once more, looking her dead in the eye. "D'you want me to ask you?"

With the way he's looking at her, with so much heat in his gaze that she's pretty sure that she's about to spontaneously combust, she can hardly breathe.

Katherine does breathe, though, if only to let out a carefully measured: "Yes." Then closes her eyes tight so that she doesn't have to see his face as she asks her next question. "Do you want to ask?"

"Ace, d'you think I'd be here if I didn't?" He reaches over the table and takes her hand from where it rests in her lap, seemingly oblivious to the glare he's receiving from Miss Morton for touching her. "There ain't nobody else I think about bein' married to. I don't want nobody else."

Slowly, Katherine gathers up the courage to look at him. He thinks about being married to her? Does he know that she's been thinking about the same thing for months? When she meets his eyes, he looks like she's just given him a gift.

"So," Jack says, squeezing her hand and smiling at her, small and sweet and private, "'f I ask, you's gonna say yes?"

"I don't know." She juts her chin out, powerful, defiant, suppressing a smile. "You'll just have to ask and find out, won't you?"

Jack goes out the next day to buy a ring.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The lodging house rules are based on actual rules for a New York female-only lodging house from 1870, though rules for such places remained similar through to the 1950s and so I feel comfortable generalising them through to 1900. This is what happens when you get somebody who is studying a history degree writing canon era fic.


	29. Chapter 29

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We delve into Jack's past a little more here, so there's mentions of past abuse, just so you know. Comments make me very happy :)

When Jack was younger, the lodgehouse nuns used to get given books, sometimes, by well-meaning citizens. Their own children had usually outgrown the books, or broken the spines, or scribbled on the pages, but they were good enough to learn to read with. The problem with getting second-hand books, though, is that it's difficult to be picky about genre. Which was how Jack ended up learning to read, at least in part, through the story of the _Princess and the Pea_.

He had _hated_ that book. Not only was it a book for girls, so whoever ended up with it got ribbed incessantly, but it was also just a really stupid story, in Jack's personal opinion. What kind of person got a lovely big bed with all of those gorgeous soft mattresses and still complained? Even if he stacked every single straw mattress in the dormitory on top of one another, it still wouldn't be nearly so comfortable. Jack thought that the princess was an ungrateful bitch. Sister Winifred washed his mouth out with soap when he told her so.

But Jack is starting to realise how the princess felt. There are exactly ninety-two dollars stacked beneath his mattress, and he can feel every single one of them. The stupid thing is, he knows that he can't actually _feel_ them. But they are there. And that's enough to make sleep impossible.

Jack sits up in bed. Not a chance. He's drifted off twice already and both times he's woken up screaming. Sleep is not happening tonight. Slipping out of bed, he reaches under the mattress and wanders over to the window. The bank notes are cool and supple in his fist. He counts them out on the windowsill, muttering the numbers under his breath. Ninety-two. He counts them again, just to make sure. Ninety-two. He counts them again as he replaces them under the mattress. Ninety-two.

Outside the window is a fire escape. Jack's never used it, but tonight seems as good a night as any. Tugging a sweater over his head, he clambers out onto the fire escape and is instantly hit by the frigid air. It's cold, even for March.

Jack started sleeping up in his penthouse when he was thirteen. One of the older boys, Lewis, didn't like the way Jack's screams interrupted his sleep. Jack didn't like the way Lewis' fist felt in his face. It just became habit, after that. Even in winter, he hadn't wanted to leave it, despite the fact that it was so cold. Jack remembers why, now. There's something about having the city spread out before him, the freedom of knowing that there's no walls or roofs to hold him back. It's wide and bright and his for the taking. If he wants it. This is New York, after all. He can do anything, go anywhere.

And yet. Santa Fe doesn't seem to glisten on the horizon anymore. There's nowhere clean and green and pretty that's calling out to him that he can't find right here.

Jack falls asleep on the fire escape, hoping that it'll be the last time he ever sleeps outside. He reckons he might quite like having walls and a roof and a bed to sleep in, if Katherine is going to be in it with him.

…

Esther goes with Jack to the jewellers on 34th street.

Jack knows that, of anybody, he probably knows Katherine the best. But there's a big difference between knowing her and knowing about her taste in jewellery; girls are complicated and he has honestly no idea what she'd even like. She doesn't wear much jewellery day to day, not necklaces or bracelets or rings. Occasionally, she'll wear earrings, little pearl ones, but that doesn't tell him much about what she's going to want out of an engagement ring.

He has, however, done enough research to know that he's supposed to spend a month's salary on this ring. Frankly, he thinks that that is an obscene amount of money to spend on a tiny piece of metal, but he wants to get this right because he wants Katherine to be happy and she's used to having nice things. Hence, Esther. If anybody is going to know what a lady is going to like, it's going to be another lady, isn't it?

She'd seemed pleased, at least, when he'd asked her to come along. He'd felt a bit silly, to be honest, but he doesn't know all that much about this sort of thing and the smile she'd given him when he'd asked, hand rubbing at the back of his neck as he stood in the doorway of her kitchen, has made him pretty sure that he made the right call.

Jack meets her outside the jewellers, touching his hand to his cap as he approaches. "Mrs. Jacobs."

"Jack," the woman smiles, "how many times have I told you to call me Esther?"

"Sorry, ma'a- Esther." Jack ducks his head.

Esther takes the arm that he offers her as they step toward the store entrance, a smile tugging at her lips. "Are you excited?"

"I ain't gettin' excited until she says yes." Jack laughs.

That's a bald-faced lie. He's been dreaming about this moment for weeks, about handing the wodge of bank notes that sit, warm and heavy, in his pocket over the counter and getting a little velvet-covered box back. He's barely holding himself together, feeling that at any moment he might explode with how much he fucking loves Katherine Pulitzer. But he's also scared out of his wits. So, he's keeping quiet. If his nineteen years on this earth have taught him anything, it's not to get your hopes up until it's in the bag.

Inside, the salesgirl seems disappointed when Jack tells her that they're looking for an engagement ring. Still, she asks about their budget (Jack's never felt more proud to say anything than he does to say the words _ninety-two dollars_ ) and leads them over to this big glass cabinet that's just full of all of these shining rings. As he shifts his weight from one foot to another, they catch in the light, shimmering and glittering and perfect. How the hell is he supposed to choose?

"'S a lotta rings."

Esther seems to sense that he honestly has absolutely no idea what the hell he's doing and looks over, comforting and gentle. "What kind of thing does Katherine usually wear?"

"I dunno." Jack looks down at the scuffed toes of his boots, rubbing at the back of his neck. "Sorry, ma'am - sorry, Esther."

"It's okay, Jack." She laughs, which is definitely not the reaction that Jack is expecting, but he'll sure as hell take it. "Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me if Mayer had a similar answer about what I wear."

Jack thinks he wouldn't mind so much if he turned out like Mayer. The man terrifies him, don't get him wrong – but educated, like, with a family who seems to think he's the bee's knees. Jack doesn't think he'd mind being like that.

"Whaddaya think o' this one?" He points. "I know it ain't fancy, but I don't think she's wantin' somethin'-" he breaks off to gesture vaguely with his hands, trying to communicate, through fluttering fingers, a sense of ostentation, all the while wishing that he had his sketchbook with him so he could explain what he actually means, "- y'know."

The ring that Jack points to is gold, with a simple swirl of a band, and a single, solitary diamond mounted in it. It's the kind of ring, he thinks, that looks quietly expensive, in the same way as a well-tailored suit or a high-quality fountain pen does. When he looks at the price tag underneath, he doesn't know whether to be pleased or not. It's within budget, ninety dollars, but that is still a heckuvah lot of money.

"It's very nice." Esther nods, raising her eyebrows, then turns to smile at the salesgirl. "Excuse me, could we take a look at this one, please?"

The salesgirl removes it from the glass case with dainty fingers, perfectly manicured fingernails. They look like the fingernails of a girl that cares a little bit too much, Jack thinks. Katherine's fingers aren't like that, the nails chewed down to stumps because she has a habit of biting at them when she's thinking hard about an article, smearing the ink that stains her fingertips across her bottom lip.

When she hands him the ring to look at, she smiles at him in the way that the dockyard girls do, coy and inviting. For the first time in his life, that look makes him feel itchy under his skin in a way that is deeply unpleasant.

"It's really sweet of you to bring your mother along to choose the ring." The girl says, batting her eyelashes.

Jack's stomach turns over, torn between looking at Esther to see the revulsion that he knows will be there on her face and sprinting out of the door. In the end, he has to do the former, because he isn't going to get arrested for stealing a ring that he fully intends to pay for. Except, there's no revulsion there, none at all. Instead, she says: "He is a sweet one."

Jack knows, ostensibly, that Esther isn't correcting the salesgirl because she wants to be polite and not make things awkward. Still, there's something about the fact that the girl assumed he was her son and Esther _didn't correct her_. He knows, of course, that he doesn't have a patch on Davey, when it comes to model son material. David is clever and kind and hard working. Nobody would want a Jack when they could have a David. But maybe, just sometimes, Esther might want a Jack as well. Not every day, mind you, he isn't a fool, but, you know. Occasionally. Maybe. He could be very happy with an occasionally. He'd love an occasionally. Occasionally having a mother is better than not having one at all. Especially when it's a mother like Esther.

She puts her hand on his shoulder when he takes the roll of bank notes out of his pocket and puts them on the counter. Esther even keeps it there until the salesgirl hands him back a little box of navy-blue velvet. It feels like home.

…

Honestly, Jack has never felt better. His boys want him. Esther wants him. Katherine wants him. It's strange to be wanted, after so many years of wanting. He rather likes it. And then it all comes crashing down in seven words.

"Jack, I want to ask you something." _Well, fuck._ Those words, in Jack's experience, have never meant anything good. Oblivious, Esther ploughs on. "Did David do something… less than tactful, the last time he was with you? Because he's not spoken about you in a while, and usually you two are thick as thieves. I couldn't get very much out of him, but he seems to think that he's upset you."

 _Shit._ Jack takes a deep breath. "I ain't _upset_."

"Ah." Esther says, looking at him through slightly narrowed eyes that make his heart beat just a little bit too fast in his chest.

"I ain't mad, neither." Jack hurries to clarify himself. _This is her son, you idiot, and though she might be being nice to you, that's conditional._ "Dave's jus' doin' his best. Ain't his fault I's stupid. I thought he ain't wantin' to be round me no more, 'cos I wasn't real nice last time we sees each other."

"May I ask what happened?"

Jack considers deflecting, then decides against it. Esther seems like the kind of person who wouldn't stand for that kind of thing. Davey always goes on and on about honesty and integrity and whilst deflecting isn't the same as lying, Jack would like to point out, he figures it probably won't go over well.

"He was bein' real nice, tryna teach me my numbers 'cos I ain't never learned 'em, but they weren't lookin' like they were s'posed to. They was all… hazy, like. Shiftin' about. An' I got angry, an' I can be mean when I's angry. Think I gets it from my old man."

"You remember your father?" She sounds surprised. Jack doesn't meet her eyes.

"Unfortunately."

"Ah." Esther says, like she understands. As if she could. "Like that, is it?"

"Nah, not really." Jack shrugs, still not looking at her, burying one hand in his hair to scratch at his scalp, the other in his pocket to fidget with the ring box there. "He was a good bloke, mosta the time. Taught me some real good lessons. He liked a bit o' the drink, though, an' he got mean after that."

 _Mean_. Yeah, his old man could get mean alright. Jack wonders what a person like Esther Jacobs thinks _mean_ is. Don't get him wrong, he doesn't think she's had an easy life by any means. He knows enough about accents to know that she isn't from around here and Davey says she's from Poland. You don't come to America, foreign, Jewish, poor, and live an easy life. But Davey said she was married when she came and, from what he can tell, Mayer never smacks her around. He certainly hasn't seen any of the tell-tale signs, no bruises peeking out over collars or cuffs, not even flinching away from her husband's touch. He hadn't even seen any when he'd met her first, and that was during the strike, when they were hard-up for money and Mayer was round the house all the time. If he hadn't hit her then, Jack doubts he ever will. He wonders what _mean_ means when a slap round the face, or worse, isn't even on the table.

Jack wonders what she'd say, if he told her some of his stories. Not the watered-down versions he tells to Katherine, cut-off snippets that end just as soon as he sees her eyes start to get all wet. No, the real versions. The time his old man held him under water so long he couldn't breathe right for days after. The time his father locked him in a cupboard and left him there for three days while he went off drinking. The time his dad made a slice across his arm with a pocketknife for every second between the request for the bottle on the sideboard and Jack delivering it to the couch. He wonders if she knows what he means, when he says _mean_.

Jack doesn't want pity. There are plenty of kids who have had it worse than him. He just wonders whether it would make her want him more, or less.

"You aren't your father, Jack." She says it like she knows. Jack wants to believe her, really, he does. "And Davey still wants to be around you. Why don't you come for dinner tonight?"

"I dunno, Mrs. Jacobs."

"Jack, it's as much your home as it is ours." She puts her hand on his arm, when she says that, in a way that forces Jack to look at her. His skin feels hot, where she's touching it, the kind of heat that's a finger pressed against a radiator that can't decide whether to pull away or power through. "Let me force a hot meal into you, for once."

"I – yeah, okay."

…

"Jack, wha-" David looks dumbstruck when he opens his bedroom door to see Jack standing there, one hand in his pocket, the other scratching at his temple.

"How'd you feel about tryin' again wi' those numbers?" Jack asks, all in one breath. Then he realises how stupid and random he sounds.

"…Sure." Davey finally says, creaking the door open further and beckoning Jack in. Stepping into the bedroom feels like forgiveness, like a cool breeze on a hot day. "How come?"

"Well," Jack rubs at the back of his neck, "I's gonna need to write down my weddin' anniversary if I wanta remember it."

David looks up like he's been electrocuted. "You haven't-"

Jack nods, lips pressed together, suppressing a smile as he produces the ring box from his pocket and flips it open to display the ring. "I's goin' to ask for Pulitzer's blessin' this week."

"Wow." David says, sitting down heavily on his bed, the coverlet making a _flump_ as he does so.

"Yeah, I know." Jack chuckles.

Davey looks a little shellshocked, so Jack sits down on the bed next to him, clapping the other boy on the shoulder. Davey's bed is comfortable. It has a quilt on it that has his initials stitched into it. There's a matching quilt on the opposite bed with Les'. Jack wonders if Esther made them.

Until Jack moved into his apartment, he'd never had a bedroom of his own. Neither the lodgehouse nor the Refuge had ever really gone in for the cushy private room thing, and before that, when his old man was still alive, he'd just curled up on a pile of blankets in the corner of the one-room apartment they'd had while his father took the couch. Jack's never really had the chance to enjoy this whole having a bedroom thing, either, what with spending the first two weeks he slept in it on the verge of death and everything. Since then, it's been sort of abandoned. It has blankets on the bed now, courtesy of Medda, and a closet he got from a flea market to put what few clothes he has in, but nothing else. Jack will never admit it, but he honestly never knew that bedrooms were supposed to look like this.

Davey's room is like something out of a storybook. Or, at least, it seems that way to Jack. It's not big, not by any means, but it has two separate beds – he doesn't even have to share with Les – and lots of blankets. Books, predictably, are strewn everywhere as they always are in the Jacobs household; well-thumbed adventure books for Les, textbooks for Davey. It even as curtains, which is a new one on Jack. He's always just figured that everybody wakes up with the sunrise or the tolling of the circulation bell, whichever comes first. The Jacobs boys have curtains, blue and white chequered ones, to block out the morning sunlight and an alarm clock to wake them up instead.

"I mean, congratulations!" Davey finally manages, returning the gesture and clapping Jack on the shoulder.

"Thanks, Davey." Jack shuts the little velvet ring box, then depresses the clasp, letting the lid spring open again. He must do it at least four more times, fiddling and fidgeting, before he continues. "You wanta be best man? 'F she says yes, like."

David snaps his head up to look at the other boy, looking at him like he's just asked him to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge. "Wha- aren't you askin' Crutchie?"

"I mean, I can 'f you don't wanta." Jack shrugs, leaning back on the bed, casually calculated. "'S jus', I don't want none o' the boys feelin' like I's playin' favourites. 'S all. Was easy when I moved out – Crutchie needed the warm, wi' his leg an' all. But this is different. I can ask Crutch though-"

"No, no, of course I'll be your best man." David cuts him off, almost biting his tongue in his rush to get the words out. "I just… wasn't expectin' it."

"Why not? You's my best mate." Jack looks at him, properly, for the first time in minutes, his brow furrowing. Then, schooling his features into a grin, he adds: "You's also the only one I trust not to lose the rings."

Davey snorts. "That's very fair." There's a pause, a comfortable silence that settles over the room, before: "I passed my entrance exam."

"Wha- Davey, 's great!" The grin spreads so wide across Jack's face that it almost splits his face in half. "You's gonna be a lawyer!"

"I'm goin' to be a law _student_." David rolls his eyes.

"To-may-to, to-mah-to." Jack waves a dismissive hand, drawing out the syllables. "I's real proud o' you, Davey." He lands a playful punch on the other boy's arm, but when it's not reciprocated, he lowers his voice and adds: "Jus'… don't you forget 'bout us, in your fancy new school."

David looks at him like he's just said the most laughable thing in the world. "As if I could forget about any of the newsies. I don't imagine any of you will leave me alone long enough to forget about you."

"What can I say?" Jack shrugs, pleased with his response. "We's inevitable."

"David, dinner's ready-" Sarah pushes the door open, then stops in her tracks, "-oh, hello, Jack."

The boys look over. Jack shoots her a charming grin, the kind that made her melt the very first time that she'd met him. "Hey, Sarah."

Sarah suddenly feels immensely conscious of her stained blouse and unkempt hair. Her eyes light on the box Jack's cradling in his hands, blue velvet dissonant against calloused skin. Metal, polished, diamond. Her heart flips over in her chest.

"Oh, 's for Kath." Jack says, catching her gaze and offering up the box, looking proud. "Your mom helped me pick it out, whaddaya think?"

It's hard to get the words out around the lump in her throat. "I'm sure she'll love it."


	30. Chapter 30

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Forgot to add this when I uploaded the chapter but if you would like to know what Pulitzer's office looked like, [here](https://stuffnobodycaresabout.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Joseph-Pulitzers-office-in-the-dome-of-the-World-Building-175x300.jpg) is a sketch of it that I found. Its location in the building, as described in this chapter, is consistent with its actual location within the building. Yes, I did dig up blueprints of the New York World building. Yes, it did take for-fucking-ever to find.

Despite his best efforts, it takes Jack until Wednesday to wrangle enough time when he isn't working to go and see Pulitzer. Still, he manages it, slipping off the second his lunchbreak starts and heading in the direction of the offices of the New York World.

He hasn't walked this way in months, not since he got fired, and it's strange to see it in the light of spring, with new growth on the trees and hedges. It's enough to make him feel almost hopeful. Almost. Because mostly, Jack is feeling like he's about to have a conniption. Pulitzer doesn't scare him, and he knows that this whole thing is merely performative. He's going to ask Katherine to marry him no matter what her father says. It won't make one jot of difference. He reminds himself that she wants him, that she chose him, that the only two people who matter in this whole godforsaken thing are the two of them. But still. He doesn't want her to have to choose. It isn't fair.

She should be able to have him _and_ her family, not one or the other. But if she has to choose, he knows two things without question. The first, that she'll choose him. He has no clue why, but she's made that pretty damn obvious. And the second, that it's her choice to make. They're past dancing around it, now. He's tried to make her choices for her before. It's not up to him to try and walk away to make it easier on her. She's with him, wherever he goes. And he wouldn't have it any other way.

None of this, however, makes the whole asking for Pulitzer's blessing thing any easier. Or less terrifying.

The doors of the World loom over him, looking just as large and imposing as they did the day he, Les, and Davey marched in to make the demands of the union. Jack hopes today doesn't end the same way as it did then. Shoving the door open, he heads up the stairs and into towards the room he knows will contain Joseph Pulitzer. Hopefully, his future father-in-law (and damnit if that isn't a thought Jack never anticipated having).

Outside the office, at a little desk, is a woman, a secretary. Jack is pretty sure that Katherine said her name was Hannah, but he's not sure.

"Mr. Kelly?" She looks up, surprised. So she remembers him from the strike, then.

"Hey." He plasters on his most charming smile. "'S Hannah, right?" She nods, so Jack continues. "I's here to see Mista Pulitzer."

"Do you have an appointment?" She frowns.

"Nah, but tell him who it is." Jack says, with more confidence than he feels. "He'll wanta see me."

Hannah looks rather taken aback by that, but she heads into Pulitzer's office nonetheless. Jack takes the opportunity to examine this part of the building; even when he was working here, he hadn't been important enough to be summoned to Pulitzer's own office and during the strike the interior design hadn't exactly been his top priority. The office is in the second storey of the building's trademark dome, walls curving with more grace than Jack ever thought a skyscraper could have. The floors are polished marble, clean enough that he wishes he could hover above them so he won't risk leaving muddy footprints there.

Hannah emerges, looking him over as if trying to ascertain whether he's stolen anything in her absence. Jack wouldn't mind, but he hasn't stolen anything in at least two years, thank you very much. Besides, what around here is there to steal, anyway? He'd look bloody pregnant if he tried to smuggle one of those ornate glass lamps out under his shirt. Give him some credit, he's not that stupid.

Despite the suspicion, Hannah waves him into the office. Jack sets his shoulders and strides in. He is not afraid of Katherine's father. He's scared of Katherine, of losing her, but not her father. Absolutely not.

Still, he is careful with the confidence he layers on. Not too much, none of the cheek he wore when he walked into this room during the strike; no, something different, more mature, more gentlemanly. Strong. Respectful. He can do that. Right?

"Mr. Kelly, this is a surprise."

"Mista Pulitzer."

Jack stands before him, clutching his cap in both hands, feeling a little bit like a schoolboy sent to face the principal. He ought, he knows, to put himself on a level playing field with Pulitzer and sit down. Act like a gentleman. Goodness knows why it feels so scary now. He never had a problem sitting down and poking fun at the other man during the strike.

No, no poking fun now though. Katherine always tells him that he will catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. Honestly, he still doesn't really know what that phrase actually means, but it boils down to _you should be nicer, Jack,_ so he's going to damn well try.

Except he's already failed at that, because he's stood there saying nothing and Pulitzer is clearly only just holding back from checking his watch or rapping his knuckles against the table. Still, it's the older man who breaks the silence, asking: "What can I do for you?"

 _Now or never, Kelly. Come on._ "I's here to ask for your blessin'. To marry Katherine." Jack means to leave it there, but he can't, not when Pulitzer is looking at him like that, completely emotionless. "I, uh, I gots a ring," he rummages around in his pocket for the box, "an' I jus' – I really love her an' I's been savin'-"

"How much?" Joseph cuts him off, sliding open a drawer of his mahogany desk and rifling around in it, seemingly immune the nerves of the man before him.

Jack blinks. "How much- oh, I love her so much, Mista Pulitzer, I-"

"No, Mr. Kelly." Pulitzer says, derisive, bringing out a chequebook and dipping his fountain pen in ink as if they are negotiating wood pulp prices for the World, business-like, distant. "How much do you need to walk away from this office and never speak of this again?" He looks up at Jack over his glasses, assessing the other man even through blurred vision, his pen hovering over the thick bank-issue paper expectantly. "Five thousand dollars? Ten thousand?"

Jack feels a bead of sweat trickle down the back of his neck. Suddenly it's not just Pulitzer's eyes on him, but the eyes of every marble bust set atop cabinets and bookshelves in the room. They stare at him, Ancient Greek and Roman eyes, assessing, calculating, looking back at him from a time before girls like Katherine even knew of the existence of guys like him. The thought of taking money makes him feel a little bit sick. The thought of leaving Katherine makes him feel more so. Ten thousand dollars is a nauseating amount of money. It'd take him a decade to earn that much, never mind save it, and here Pulitzer is tossing that figure out like it's nothing. It should be attractive, but it doesn't make him feel anything but sick.

"Mista Pulitzer, I ain't after money." He straightens his shoulders, forcing himself to look the other man in the eye. "You could offer me a million dollars an' I ain't gonna take it."

"Very well." Pulitzer sets his pen atop the chequebook, a smear of ink staining the top cheque. The man notices, scowls, and rips the blank cheque from the book, throwing it into the bin under the desk. Finally, he returns to Jack and steeples his fingers, as if for the time he was distracted, Jack had ceased to exist. "I hope you know that by doing this, you are most probably sentencing her to a life of poverty and ridicule."

"I ain't – I –"

"You are ruining her life. You are not good enough for her."

Jack wonders whether Pulitzer somehow heard what he said, that night so many months ago, whether he intends to throw his own words back at him. _I's nobody. I know you ain't seein' that right now, but one day you will. In a year, or five, or twenty. An' I don't wants to still be around when you realises I ruined your life._ Ruining her life. Yeah, he probably is.

Squeezing his eyes shut, Jack forces down the insecurity, the shame, the guilt that bubbles in his stomach. It's not his decision. It's Katherine's. He's tried to decide what's best for her before, and, to put it lightly, that didn't go over well. He wants Katherine, not some girl who he can boss around. Yes, he might be ruining her life. But at least she's choosing him to do it, rather than her father, or some other rich toff.

"I know I ain't good enough for her." Jack grits out. "But I ain't goin' to ruin her life. I's doin' everythin' in my power-"

"But you don't have power, Mr. Kelly. I do."

Jack tries to breathe through it, imagining Katherine's hand on his arm, soothing, in an attempt to stop himself from decking Joseph Pulitzer there and then. Punching your future father-in-law is probably not a good look for him, if he's honest. Speaking in anger probably isn't either.

Pulitzer looks back down at the paperwork on his desk, all printed in large blocky letters and weighed down by a magnifying glass. It's like Jack isn't even there anymore. "You may leave. You do not, and will never have, my permission to marry my daughter."

"I ain't askin' for your permission;" Jack snaps, slamming his palm down on the desk, forcing Pulitzer to look up at him; then realises that's probably not the best way to get the other man's attention, so steps back, lip curled and shaking his head, "I was askin' for your blessin'. You ever stopped to think 'bout what Katherine wants?"

Pulitzer gazes at him, long and level. "Have you ever stopped to think about what's best for her?"

Jack knows he's being selfish, but he can't help it. He's going to ask her. It's not what's best for her, perhaps, but it's what she wants. And damnit if he isn't going to spend the rest of his life giving her everything she wants.

He turns around and walks out.

Jack doesn't acknowledge Hannah as he leaves, ramming his cap back down on his head with a face like thunder. It's all he can do not to break into a run as he descends the endless stairs, head ducked and trying to be as invisible as humanly possible. He used to be pretty good at that, invisibility, when he wanted to be. It's a useful skill when you're on the streets. Invisibility helps you steal, helps you keep out of fights, helps you stay alive.

He'd rather like to be invisible now. He's got to ask her, of course he has, but it's so hard when he knows that her answer has a fifty percent chance of ruining her life.

"Jack?"

He looks up from under his cap, half-stumbling with the shock of hearing his own name, and, well, speak of the devil. Before him is Katherine looking, frankly, far prettier than she has any right to at a moment of crisis such as this. Her dress today is floral, new. _Sentencing her to a life of poverty._ Jack won't be able for her to have dresses like that regularly. Sure, maybe occasionally, but still. _Sentencing her._

"Hey, Ace." What is she even doing here? Then he remembers: the daddy-daughter lunch dates. Maybe Pulitzer is finally taking his advice – _I'd sign her before somebody else grabs her up._

"What's wrong?" Katherine frowns. "What are you doing here?"

Maybe, Jack thinks, he should just do it here. Get it over with, have her reject him in the corridor of her father's building. That really would be ultimate victory for Pulitzer, wouldn't it? He doesn't know if it would be worse if she accepted; if he knew that he would be responsible for her future misery. The ring box in his pocket feels so warm that he's pretty sure it might burn right through the fabric.

"'S a long story. I'll tell you later, alright? I's gotta get back to work." He nods at her in a way that he hopes looks calm and controlled.

"Yeah, okay." Katherine nods, eyes narrowed but willing to let it go. She leans up, kisses him on the cheek, and Jack wonders how he will ever live without her. "I love you."

"Love you too."

After work. He'll stop by her office after work. He'll ask her.

…

Hannah announces Katherine's entrance in a low voice. Joseph likes to think that he can perceive his own daughter, even through half-blind eyes, but he's grateful all the same. He wouldn't put it past himself, at this juncture, not to recognise her at all.

"Katherine." He nods, signing a piece of paper with a practiced flourish.

"Father." She takes a seat opposite him, sinking into the dark leather that's softened with wear, and waits as he moves on to a different sheet of paper. It's been weeks of her meeting him for lunch and she's learned that it's better just to wait whilst he finishes off his paperwork. Still, she can't quite hold her tongue. "I just saw Jack leaving, is everything alright?"

Her father freezes, just for a moment, then delicately places his pen down and removes his glasses. "Mr. Kelly came to ask my permission to marry you." Katherine nearly chokes, her eyes widening. "I said no."

And, well, if that isn't just the cherry on top. Katherine doesn't know what to say, so she splutters out an: "I beg your pardon?"

"I offered him ten thousand dollars to walk away. He said no. I did too." Her father shrugs, taking up his pen again, the picture of nonchalance, settling his gold-rimmed glasses on his nose once again.

Katherine looks up at the moulded ceiling, pasty flowers blooming across the cornices. The upper part of the office windows are stained glass and they throw colours into her eyes as she shifts, blinding her in flashes of red and blue and green. She squints through the bright spring sunlight and pushes on, trying very hard not to explode. Or implode, honestly. _People have rows._ Maybe now Jack's shown her how to solve one, she'll be able to sort this whole mess out without having one at all. Goodness knows what Jack had said to her father in the midst of all this. She has to be the diplomatic one.

"You- you've tried to bribe Jack before and he wouldn't take the money." She fights to keep her voice level. "What makes you think he'd take it now?"

"I assumed that he was asking in revenge. I miscalculated."

 _Jack asking me to marry him purely in order to get back at my father?_ The very notion of it is laughable. Except it isn't very funny at all. _How can people think that about Jack? How can they look at him and not see the gentleness and the care? Why is all they see the rough union leader?_

"And you still said no." Flat, resigned.

"Naturally."

"Why, Father?" Katherine is shocked to find her eyes filling with tears. This shouldn't be a surprise to her, her father has done this so many times, throwing these things her way and expecting her to catch them and run with them like a good little girl. Did she really think that a few little lunch dates were going to change anything? That the anniversary of Lucy's death had finally shifted his perspective back onto his family? "I thought you were _trying_."

"I am trying, Katherine." Her father says, huffing like she's just insulted him. "I am trying to protect you. I make mistakes, I'm not perfect. I assumed that by indulging your… dealings with Mr. Kelly, that you would become bored with this rebelliousness. He, admittedly, hasn't given that enough time to work, but I trust that you will have enough common sense to reject his proposal, should he persist in making it."

 _It seems the more I protest, the more you defy me. If I succumb, you will get bored. That's how you work, Katherine. I raised you. And I work that way too._ All of this. It's all just another game. Double bluff. _Use your words, Katherine, use your words._

"No, I will not reject him."

Katherine juts her chin out, glaring at him, daring him. She will not succumb. She will not lose this game.

"I would think very carefully about that, Katherine." Her father straightens his shoulders. Soldier's posture, military airs, even after so many years. "This is not some girlish scheme to become a reporter or-"

"No." Katherine snaps, jumping to her feet. "I didn't expect you to be happy about it, but I thought you at least respected me enough to-"

"I respect you enough to not let you ruin your life."

"You're the one who is ruining my life!"

And, well, that shuts them both up. The words sound juvenile, the rantings of a lovestruck teenager railing against parents who want to impose a curfew. It's _Romeo and Juliet_ level dramatic. It's true, though. Katherine is a teenager. She is railing against her parents. She isn't lovestruck, by any means, her care for Jack doesn't blind her to anything, but still. She's in love.

Joseph takes several deep breaths, in and out, through his nose, nostrils flaring. "I have given you everything, Katherine, everything."

The words come out bitter and biting. And that's true, too. Katherine knows what her father gave up for them. Her father was homeless in the years after he came to America. He worked his way up from nothing, out of nothing more than the dust on the city streets. But she doesn't want everything, not the everything that her father does, anyway. She just wants an editor who takes her seriously and a little house to share with Jack, someplace to raise kids.

"If you accept his proposal, you will no longer be a part of this family, Katherine. Think about that." And isn't that an ultimatum if Katherine's ever heard one.

Her family. Her life. Everything she's ever known. Or Jack. But it isn't just Jack, is it? It's Jack _and_. Jack _and_ his band of brothers that have been like a family to her from the start. Jack _and_ his support for her writing career. Jack _and_ her. Her _and_ Jack. And then it's not much of a choice at all, really.

"I stand by what I said. It hasn't been a family since Lucy died."

She walks out.

…

The walk to Jack's office isn't long or particularly hilly, but Katherine's breathing rather more heavily than she probably ought to be if she'd been walking like a lady. That might have something to with her going more for the option of sprinting, rather than walking.

"Hello, Miss Plumber!" Still, Miss Rhodes greets her with endless cheer. Katherine has been to meet Jack many times, but most of the time she waits outside. She's only actually entered the building a handful of times, but Miss Rhodes seems to know everybody's name. It had taken Hannah two years to get her name right when she started working for her father. "Mr. Kelly is in a meeting right now-"

"Miss Rhodes, it's urgent. Please could you get him for me?"

There must be something in Katherine's expression, something raw and desperate, because Miss Rhodes softens her cheeriness and leads her over to a small room off the lobby.

"Okay. We, uh, have a meeting room free over here, can you wait there? I'll go and fetch him."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not a massive fan of how this chapter turned out, but oh well. I promise that the proposal is coming next chapter. Comments brighten my day :)


	31. Chapter 31

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please enjoy the proposal chapter a day early because I have the day from hell with classes tomorrow. I'm not hugely pleased with how it's turned out, but I don't know how to fix it. Comments are, as always, greatly appreciated x

“Kath, what’re you- mmph!“ Without preamble, Katherine marches over to him and shoves him up against the wall, laying her mouth over his.

Kissing him, she’s discovered, is her favourite way to shut him up. And bless him, the boy catches on fast, wrapping one arm around her waist and tangling a paint-stained hand in her hair. With a swipe of his tongue across her bottom lip, she’s open for him, and he licks into her with frankly admirable singularity of purpose. It’s only when Katherine thinks she might drown in him that she breaks away, breathless. Seeing Jack look so dazed makes something proud tighten in her chest. He’s quick off the mark to lean back in for another kiss, but Katherine thinks she might actually pass out from lack of oxygen, so she takes her arms from around his neck and holds his face in her hands, resting their foreheads together. Jack closes his eyes.

“Not that I’s complainin’ about havin’ a gorgeous girl throwin’ hersel’ at me the second I walks in the door,” Jack huffs out, his voice all gravel and heat like a new road on a summer day, “but wouldja care to explain what the hell is goin’ on?”

“Yes.” Katherine says, firm. She’s never been more sure of anything in her entire life.

“What?” Jack opens his eyes to search hers, completely baffled.

“Yes, I will marry you.”

Jack doesn’t say anything. Katherine wonders, for one, long, terrible moment, if her father had been lying about it all. If it was all just one more move in the game, another scheme designed to break them apart. She’s about ready to turn and run straight out of the office entrance in shame when Jack’s eyes darken and he sweeps her into a blistering kiss.

“Y’know,” he mumbles into her mouth, half laughing, “traditionally you’s s’posed to let a guy ask, first.”

“If you’re looking for traditional, you’re marrying the wrong woman.” Katherine grins, setting to on a mission of laying kisses down the side of his neck.

His head hits the wall behind him with a thump and he groans. “Oh no, Ace, I’s definitely marryin’ the right one.”

 _The right one._ Her heart soars. He lets her continue her fantastic work for a few moments longer before he eases away from her, chuckling.

“Lemme get the actual ring, wouldja?” He fumbles around in his trouser pocket until his fingers, suddenly clammy and sweat-soaked, close over the velvet box. They stop there.

Jack’s eyes flicker back up to meet hers and there’s a vulnerability there that she’s never seen, not even when he talks about the Refuge. “I ain’t- Katherine, I can’t… keep you in the _manner to which you’s accustomed_. Is you sure-“

She cuts him off, monotonal. “I can’t mend clothes. I’m terrible at it.”

“Okay…” Jack looks bewildered. She ploughs on.

“And I won’t give up my career to be a housewife.”

 _Ah._ A spark of recognition lights in Jack’s eyes and he nods in the beginnings of understanding. “I’s collected thirty brothers with no understandin’ of personal boundaries.”

“I snap at the people I love when I’m upset.”

“I runs away when I gets scared.”

“My father is a monster.”

Jack opens his mouth as if to add something, then shuts it again. Katherine smiles at him, just a little, before she speaks. “So, are we done listing all the reasons we shouldn’t do this?” He nods. “Good, because I’ve got a pretty good one for why we should.” She steps right up into his space and cups his cheek in her hand. Jack doesn’t even flinch, and that in itself makes her want to cheer. “I love you.”

“Right then.” He nods tightly, a smile spreading across his face, and steps away from her touch to drop to one knee. “I love you too, Ace.”

His hands are shaking so badly that it takes him two tries to get the ring out of the box and onto her finger, but they manage it, in the end, giggling and falling over one another, giddy with prospect and opportunity and future. When it’s done, Jack stood with his arms around her waist, her hand over his heart, glinting in the overhead electric light of the meeting room, he kisses her.

“I kept the receipt.” Jack says, stepping back a little to admire the ring on her finger - _his_ ring, on _her_ finger - scratching at the back of his neck. “So’s we can swap it ‘f you don’ like it.”

“I love it.” Katherine smiles down at the ring, running the pad of her thumb over the band, feeling the metal warming against her skin. It’s _perfect_ ; beautiful but understated. Subtle. The opposite of everything that’s expected of her. “I love _you_.”

“I love you too.” Then, a little quieter: “You promise you’s thought this through? That you wants to do this?”

“Jack Kelly, there is nobody else.” Katherine tells him, firm and grounded. “We are young and we’ll screw up, no doubt, but we’ll muddle through. Why,” she asks, a sudden glint in her eye, “are you scared?”

“Do I look scared?”

And, yes, he looks absolutely terrified. But he’s determined too, and so is she.

…

Katherine doesn’t know exactly how she’s supposed to work for the rest of the afternoon. How is she supposed to think about some stupid flower show that Mr. Ross wants an article on when she has a ring on her finger? When she’s going to be Jack’s wife? How can anybody expect her to concentrate on anything?

The article is the biggest load of claptrap she’s ever written and she knows it, even as she pushes it across Mr. Ross’ desk. But it’s done and that means she can leave early, and that means she has time to make a stop at the post office before she goes to meet Jack after work.

The man behind the post office counter congratulates her when she recites the message that she wants on her transatlantic telegram. It makes her feel warm inside.

**MOTHER, CONSTANCE,**

**JACK AND I ARE ENGAGED – STOP – DETAILS TO FOLLOW – STOP –**

**KATHERINE**

Katherine has to force herself not to break into a run on her way to Jack’s office. She may be getting married, but that is no excuse for unladylike behaviour. It turns out pretty well, though, because he’s just coming out of the office as she’s walking over and his face lights up when he sees her. He’s hers. Forever.

Jack sweeps her up and spins her round, planting a kiss on her lips, and she giggles into his mouth, giddy with it all. Passers-by give them dirty looks, they’re in the middle of the pavement, after all, but Katherine can’t bring herself to care. They’re _engaged._ There’s nothing inappropriate about it. Nothing, and she means it, _nothing_ , can put a downer on her mood. Not even when Jack suggests that instead of going straight back to his apartment, that they call round the lodgehouse to tell the boys.

On their way, they drop by Crutchie’s office to show him. Crutchie tells Jack _it’s about damn time_ and Jack gives the other boy a surprisingly heartfelt thank you for helping him to the buy the ring. As they walk away, Katherine has to ask, and Jack explains, smiling and fond, about Crutchie’s Christmas present to him. Katherine gets a little bit stuck on that. She knows that he’s been saving, of course, but it’s a very different thing to be saving with that kind of determined intention. Since at least Christmas. She’s known for months that she wants to marry him, but he’s been _planning_ this for months.

She’s still reeling from it when they walk into the lodgehouse, when, as always happens, Jack is immediately hijacked by the newsies. Within thirty seconds of entering the dormitory, he has one small newsie attached to each limb and several older ones shouting various tidbits at him. Race comes over to clap her on the shoulder. It’s unexpected, that gesture, and she has to struggle not to go flying forwards when he does it, but still. It’s actually kind of nice. Like she’s one of the boys. Eventually, though, Jack manages to disentangle himself from the mess of smaller newsies and elbow his way across the dormitory to reach her, snagging an arm around her waist.

“We’s got some big news, so shuddup.” Jack yells, ushering the boys into relative silence. “Kath an’ I,” he turns to grin down at her, catching up her hand and holding it up for the boys to see, “is goin’ to be gettin’ married.”

The room explodes. They get swarmed by kids who wrestle Jack onto a bunk only to pummel him with playful punches and calls of _get it, Jackie,_ whilst others tug Katherine’s hand left and right to get a proper look at the ring, shouting and squealing.

And then Race hops up on a top bunk and yells: “Is we invited?”

With a start, Jack realises that they’ve never actually discussed it. Of course, he wants his boys there, they’re family, after all, the only family he’s got, but Katherine’s folks are hardly going to be over the moon with a bunch of street urchins who wouldn’t know good behaviour if they got hit over the head with it filling up the church. He looks over at Katherine, ready, at one look from her, to deflect the question. But she doesn’t even glance at him.

“No, Race, we’re going to make you sit outside.” Katherine deadpans. “ _Of course_ you’re invited.”

Katherine says it as if there isn’t anything conditional about it, as if it’s been a given from the start, from the second she burst into his apartment and said yes. From the minute she told him _for sure_ up in his penthouse. Like there was never any question. He wants to kiss her.

…

They go back to his apartment for dinner. By the time they’re done eating, it’s thirty minutes past eight and Katherine has missed her curfew by a mile, but, somehow, she can’t bring herself to care. Jack, bless his soul, is worrying himself silly about it, so she pins him to the couch and kisses him, thanking her lucky stars that Crutchie has finally taken some initiative and chosen to spend the night at the lodgehouse.

They've done this before, of course, but somehow it's never felt quite like this. Like they could carry on into something deeper and it wouldn't matter, because they're _engaged._ Katherine is firm, of course, in wanting to wait, but she has a sudden, intense desire to stake her claim over him. He has something to compare this to, after all, unlike her, and her competitive streak is pretty powerful. So she presses every inch of herself down against him, wanting to be impossibly closer, and relishes the groan that spills out of his mouth and into hers. Still, Jack's hands, those wonderful hands, stay resolutely on her waist, chaste and childlike, even though there's nothing childlike about the rest of him, or the way he's kissing her back. It's probably too forward to tell him to move them, to ask him to help her undo her corset the way that she's undone his tie, isn't it? Katherine's pretty sure he's made her lose her head. 

When she pulls away, breathless, Jack is frankly impressed with himself for still having cognitive function. 

“Can I stay?” She blurts out, afraid that if she doesn’t speak the words immediately then she’ll swallow them down in fear.

It takes Jack a good thirty seconds to process her question. She expects him to handle her kissing him like that and be able to not only understand, but also respond? In Jack's personal opinion, that's a tad unreasonable.

“What?” His brow furrows. It’s hard for Katherine to concentrate on his question, though, when his pupils are blown so wide because of her.

“Here. Tonight. Can I stay?” She asks. At Jack’s dumbstruck expression, she quickly amends her question. “Not, not to do anything. But just… to be.”

“Kath,” Jack shifts underneath her, looking away, his tone so chiding that it reminds her of Ralph, “‘f someone should see – an’ you not married-“

“ _Please_.”

He never could say no to her. “You can take Crutchie’s bed.”

Katherine frowns. Well, that was not the response she’d been aiming for. “You don’t need-“

“Katherine.” Jack cuts her off, looking at her, firm but – yes, a little desperate. “I ain’t some sorta saint, here.”

And, well. She doesn’t want _that,_ not yet. But it’s sort of exhilarating. The thought that he wants her so much. The knowledge that he cares enough to hold back. Because it would be easy, right now, to take advantage; when they’re both so eager, despite her convictions. If he tried, he could probably coerce her into his bed and not just to sleep. But he isn’t doing.

So, she takes Crutchie’s bed. The room is nice; Jack puts the fire in the grate so that she doesn’t get cold, burning low and comforting. Or, at least, she tries to convince herself it’s comforting. She watches his hands as he makes it, stacking the kindling and newspaper, striking the match, and that's comforting, having him, strong and good and here. But when he leaves, her gaze lights on the washbasin and pitcher of water, the old-fashioned kind, on the deep-set windowsill. She manages half an hour of lying awake in bed before she grabs it and dumps the water over the fire, which hisses and sizzles into nothing. The foul smoke that comes off it makes her cough and her eyes water. Her eyes water so badly that nobody would be able to tell that she’s crying.

It gets better though, memories shifted away by the excitement of the ring she can feel, heavy on her finger. Katherine is almost afraid she’ll wear it right away with how often she finds herself running her thumb across it, the metal smooth and full of comfort. She lies awake in Crutchie’s bed, staring at the ceiling again, almost giddy enough to float up to meet it. At this rate, she knows, she’ll never get to sleep.

The creaky floorboards are cold under her bare feet as she pads out of Crutchie’s room and across the hall, gently pushing the door to the other bedroom open.

“Jack?” She whispers.

He still hasn’t got himself curtains, despite her nagging, so she can sort of see him in the half-light. It’s cloudy tonight, the moon dimmed like a lamp behind tissue paper. Jack stirs, a form stretching and curling beneath the bedsheets and, as he rolls over, she sees a little of the moonlight glint in his half-open eyes, reflected in the darkness, two bright spots in the shadows.

“Somethin’ wrong?” He blinks, voice gruff and weighed down with sleep.

“Just couldn’t sleep.” She says, easing the door closed behind her, standing in the limbo between the doorway and the bed. There’s a sudden, intense feeling that she’s somewhere that she doesn’t belong, somewhere unnatural, liminal.

And then Jack, eyes closed, speaks again, and the feeling disappears. “C’mere.”

He must still be half asleep, otherwise Katherine is confident that he’d never let her get into bed with him. Still, he’s made the invitation now, she’s hardly going to turn it down. She slips under the covers on the opposite side of the bed to Jack and startles herself with the fact that she has actually no idea what to do, now that she’s actually in bed with a man. What’s the policy here? Is she supposed to leave a minimum of six inches between their bodies, or what? Katherine isn’t stupid, she knows how the whole sexual part of this is supposed to work (or, at least, she thinks she does) but that isn’t pertinent right now. The prospect of getting married and having to deal with this stress every night suddenly seems a lot more daunting.

But then Jack, still half-asleep, if his fluttering eyelids are anything to go by, rolls onto his side and wraps an arm around her waist, pulling her into his chest. She can’t move her head all that much, because Jack’s trapped some of her hair under his arm, but she doesn’t want to wake him properly, so settles herself, squirming until she isn’t pressed quite so close against him. Jack is always ridiculously warm. Katherine reminds herself of that fact, that he’s always boiling and _no,_ he doesn’t have another fever. Still, she fists one of her hands in the worn, rough cotton of his undershirt, just to make sure he’s here and hers.

When they wake up the next morning, entangled and embarrassed, Jack realises that it’s the first time in weeks that he wasn’t woken by nightmares.


	32. Chapter 32

Jack has made an almighty mistake, he thinks, after Katherine leaves that morning, in proposing marriage to a woman whose purpose in life is, it seems, to torment him.

Jack is used to sharing a bed. Until he moved into this apartment, he's never had his own, unless you count a pile of blankets on the floor. He's huddled three to a bed in the Refuge under one threadbare blanket, and somehow that isn't as bad as sharing a comfortable bed in his own home with Katherine Pulitzer. Because she's a girl. (He's known this for a while, of course.) And girls are soft and delicate and they have curves and long hair and pretty faces, and how the hell is he supposed to deal with waking up next to that and not disgrace them both, honestly? Sure, he's had other girls before, up against alleyway walls or tucked under a thin blanket in a back room, but she seems to have managed to undo him by just lying next to him for a night, chaste as two children. It's not _his_ fault she's so bloody pretty. And then she turns up in his kitchen in a chemise and not much else, her corset half wrapped around her, blushing and asking him to lace her up.

He's whipped as all hell. He wouldn't change it for the world.

…

When Katherine arrives at Miss Morton's boarding house that evening, there's a policeman in the parlour.

Apparently, as Miss Morton tersely informs her after the amused policeman leaves, they were about ready to report her as missing after she hadn't turned up the night before. An explanation is demanded. Katherine holds up her hand, now adorned with a ring. She gets given a fine for rule-breaking and she doesn't even care.

It's harder not to care when she receives a response from her mother.

**KATHERINE,**

**A SHAME – STOP – SPEAK TO YOUR FATHER REGARDING A DOWRY – STOP – DOUBT WE WILL RETURN FOR WEDDING – STOP – CONSTANCE SAYS CONGRATULATIONS – STOP –**

**MRS. PULITZER**

_Mrs. Pulitzer._ Like she's a stranger.

The man behind the post office counter gives her a look so pitying she can hardly stand it. When she shows Jack, it's even worse. He isn't even surprised, but just goes again to ask her if she wants to do this. She gives him a look of such venom he stops halfway through the sentence and doesn't bring it up again. It only gets worse when a letter from her father comes in the morning post on Saturday.

_Dear Katherine,_

_Your mother has informed me that you have accepted Mr. Kelly's proposal. In regards to a dowry, please find the enclosed cheque; your mother insisted. Neither of us will be attending the wedding._

_For Lucy's sake, however, you still have a home with us, if you should come to your senses and break off the engagement._

_Your father,_

_Joseph Pulitzer_

She tears the letter to pieces, folding and ripping the thick writing paper into shreds, until she can't feel the lukewarm cocktail of shame and anger swirling in her stomach anymore and the words _your mother insisted_ aren't ringing in her ears. She hasn't seen him since the altercation in his office the day Jack proposed, but she still reads the letter in his voice, his own particular cadence reverberating inside of her skull.

It's funny, really, because his voice is the only part of him that is the same as the father of her childhood. Katherine isn't naïve, she knows that nostalgia is, in and of itself, a pair of rose-tinted glasses. She knows her father wasn't some sort of saint in her childhood who turned villainous with the loss of his child. But Lucy's death did change him; it changed them all. He was softer, somehow, more colourful, before. She remembers him sitting her on his knee late one evening, in his study, and letting her tap out nonsense words on his typewriter. He should have known then that he was in for trouble with her then.

Katherine debates tearing the enclosed cheque up along with the letter, but eventually decides against it. She doesn't want anything to do with her father's money, not anymore, but she has plans for the two hundred dollars. The sum itself makes her feel sick. She knows for a fact that her father discussed a sum of twelve thousand with Arthur Brooks. She'd been furious when she'd overheard their telephone conversation, back, way back before the fire, fists clenched and jaw tight kind of furious. Twelve thousand dollars made her feel like a commodity, something to be bought and sold and bartered over. Two hundred dollars? Now that she can work with.

She goes to the bank and walks out with a wodge of notes in her pocket. Three of the dollar bills go into her purse. The other one hundred and ninety-seven are given out, one by one, to every newsboy in New York. It takes her all day and her feet hurt from walking, but she comes home with empty hands and empty pockets, never having felt better.

Her and Jack, they're just fine without her father's money. They work through their problems, so that they don't have to throw money at them to make them go away. They're fine on their own.

The next Monday, Katherine puts down the three dollars she's saved to place a notice of engagement in The World for the following day. The morning after, she buys two copies from Smalls on her way to work and uses the telephone in her office to leave a message that Hannah ought to read the notices section of the morning newspaper to Mr. Pulitzer.

There's a certain formality to it, seeing it there in bold type: **Mr. John Francis Kelly and Miss Katherine Ethel Pulitzer are pleased to announce their engagement.** She cuts out the clipping from each paper during her lunch break. One she keeps for herself, secreted away in the pocket of her skirt, the other she slips into an envelope alongside a letter to Edith. The letter itself took longer than it ought to, considering its length, but the words just wouldn't come.

_Dearest Edith,_

_How are you? I expect you have been rather too busy to write to me, what with your new school and all. I hope that you are making friends and working hard._

_I have some exciting news; Jack and I are getting married! Mother and Father are, naturally, less than approving. I don't think they shall be attending. Still, if you are willing to defy them, I should like you to be there. I need a bridesmaid, after all. I can cover your train fare back without an issue, if you could come home for the wedding. It shall be sometime in August or September, I should think, though we have yet to fix a date._

_Your loving sister,_

_Katherine_

Jack grumbles about it, when he sees her – _John Francis, Kath, really? You wantin' the boys to rib me 'bout it?_ – but when he gets out his wallet to pay for their lunch, the clipping is neatly cut out and tucked inside, so she figures he isn't really that mad about it.

The engagement notice backfires somewhat, however, when, on Wednesday evening, she is accosted by a throng of women as she emerges from the offices of the Sun. Well, she says throng, there's only three of them, but they're making enough noise for thirty. A little hyperbole never hurt anyone.

"Katherine!" Eliza cries.

It isn't a shout – to shout isn't ladylike – but it's loud enough that Katherine can't pretend not to hear her. She shuts her eyes, takes a deep breath, and then turns around to greet them, nodding at each of them in turn. "Eliza, Rose, Cornelia."

"This is a kidnapping;" Rose laughs, rushing over to take her arm, "we're taking you out to dinner."

All Katherine wants is an hour or two with Jack before she goes back to the boarding house for the evening. Is that really so much to ask? "Girls, I-"

"No protests. We have a wedding to discuss."

Katherine has little choice but to let them drag her to a fancy restaurant which she is horribly underdressed for. They are all there in neat matching outfits, while she huddles at the corner of the table with an ink smeared dress and wild hair, praying that the powder she put on this morning masks her scar at least a little.

It is made clear that it doesn't when the waiter comes over and looks down his nose at her as he takes her order. It's the kind of place where the menus don't have prices on them and the titles are written in French. Katherine wonders whether she oughtn't to have saved some of those two hundred dollars sent to her by her father, but immediately, she regrets it. The newsies are starving half the time. She can afford this, still. She has savings. Sure, without her allowance from her parents, she's going to have to tighten the figurative belt a little, at least until she and Jack are married and paying the mortgage together, but that's okay. If she's lucky, once she's married, she won't ever have to go to this kind of restaurant again anyway.

The waiter plucks the menu from her hands, holding it between his thumb and forefinger as if the ink stains on her fingers will rub off onto the heavyweight, textured paper covered in neat calligraphy, and turns to Eliza. Katherine leans back in her chair and examines the restaurant. It's not one she's been to before – that said, despite her family, she doesn't exactly frequent these places. It has block coloured stained glass in the windows and marble floors. Lighting is by chandelier. It's too posh, even, for her to hear the clatter of knives and forks; instead they chime against the china plates in perfect rhythm, an orchestra.

"Let's see it, then." Cornelia says, breaking into her world.

"Hm?" Katherine looks up dumbly.

"The ring, silly!" Eliza practically squeals.

"Oh." Katherine places her hand on the table. Even in her foul mood, it's difficult not to smile at the sight of Jack's ring on her finger. "Here."

"It's very…" Cornelia wrinkles her little button nose, "…pretty." Rose elbows the woman under the table, but Katherine just juts her chin out and agrees. It is pretty, after all. Just because Cornelia decided on a ring which could sink a ship with its weight doesn't mean that Katherine's isn't beautiful. Just because when Cornelia says pretty, she means small.

"Have you fixed a date?" Rose asks, attempting polite conversation as the waiter arrives with their drinks.

Katherine sends up a quick prayer to whoever invented wine. She takes a sip, fortifying herself, then responds. "Not specifically, sometime at the end of August, I should think."

"That long? Why Katherine, that's five months away!" Eliza cries.

Katherine shrugs. "Five months is a perfectly reasonable length of time for an engagement."

"I think what Eliza means to say is that it's a long time off when you're… you know." Cornelia sneers, flicking her eyes pointedly downwards. "You'll be starting to show by then."

"Wait, you think I'm-" Katherine cuts off, lowering her voice and snatching her hand off the table, back into her lap, "- _with child_?"

"Aren't you?"

"No!"

And they actually look shocked. They aren't teasing her. They actually think that she's that loose, that Jack isn't even enough of a gentleman to wait for their wedding night. It's the implication about Jack, not herself, that does her in.

"Then why are you getting married?" Cornelia hisses.

"I don't know, Cornelia, why are you getting married to Darcy?" Katherine rolls her eyes. "Because I love him, obviously."

Cornelia looks as though Katherine just reached across the table and slapped her across the face. Eliza and Rose look on as though that just happened as well. Flushing, Katherine looks down into her lap where her hands are wrung together. It's been a long time since she was in the company of these women. It's difficult, sometimes, to remember the rules of who she used to be. The appropriate jokes, the right tone of voice, the acceptable topics of conversation. No sarcasm, not under any circumstances, which reduces most of her humour to dust. She's used to the newsies now, Davey and Race and Crutchie, and their singular brand of affection that revolves mostly around playful jibes and insults.

"Sorry, Katherine, dear. We shouldn't have assumed." Rose reaches over and pats her on the shoulder, consoling, pacifying. As if she thinks Katherine might explode into a raging pit-bull if she isn't petted like a lapdog.

Katherine takes another sip of her wine. "No, you shouldn't."

"So," Rose smiles, tight and strained, "you'll be having it at Trinity, then?"

Her parish church. Would her father allow it? Surely he would be shamed by it, to have the congregation know that his daughter was making a match that he disapproved of, even if the news only circulated in whispers after the Sunday services. Katherine feels a sudden and burning desire to have her wedding there and only there. It's petty and vindictive, she knows, but she's pretty sure that both her and Jack deserve at least that much.

"I imagine so, unless my father decides to put a spanner in the works." She shrugs. "I don't see why he should though. He won't be attending, so it hardly affects him."

"He isn't attending?"

"No, he's made it very clear that he disapproves. Sent me a cheque for two hundred dollars and left me to deal with it myself. Mother isn't even returning from France for the wedding."

"Oh Katherine." Eliza simpers, patting Katherine's arm like a two hundred dollar dowry is the worst news she's heard all year. "But who is going to give you away?"

"I don't actually know." Katherine says, realising it at the same time as the words spill out of her mouth. It bothers her in a way that it probably shouldn't – she's not property, after all, to be handed from her father to Jack. She shrugs again, feigning indifference and retracting her hand from where it rests on the table, the diamond set into her ring refracting the glow of the overhead lights. "Perhaps nobody. It hardly matters, does it?"

At the end of the dinner, which, in Katherine's opinion, could not come soon enough, she finds herself walking in the opposite direction to Miss Morton's boarding house.

…

Medda Larkin used to think that, by never having children of her own, she would escape any and all parental responsibility. She was abruptly disabused of that notion four years ago when she caught fifteen-year old Jack Kelly trying to sneak in the back door of the theatre. When she'd caught him, she hadn't expected the scrawny newsboy to have much of an excuse for anything, but he'd quickly and surely changed that. That night, she discovered two things about Jack Kelly. First, that he can talk his way out of pretty much anything. And second, that he was going to become her best set painter.

Four years on and the only thing that has changed is quite how important he's become to her. And, really, how is she supposed just to leave him to his own devices? The boy is a wonder, but he's also completely and utterly hopeless.

She'd been working herself up to the whole _you're overworking yourself and not eating enough and since when don't you know your numbers_ conversation for a month and she was pretty sure she had got a good script together when Jack turned up to paint a set for the new farce she's staging and told her that he'd proposed to Katherine. And, well, that derailed everything. He could hardly hide his grin when he told her, ruffling his hair with his hand and shifting his weight from one foot to another.

Medda had predicted it would be a week before Katherine turned up to ask for her help. It only took six days.

"So." Katherine finishes, rather lamely, fingers curled, white-knuckled, around her coffee mug.

For a girl whose article about the Vaudeville show is framed in the front window of the theatre (as Jack never fails to point out to her, wide-eyed and grinning and mock-clamouring for her autograph – she usually gives him a kiss, instead), she doesn't seem to have very many words to end on.

"So, the only problem is that you don' have nobody to give you away?" Medda asks, one eyebrow raised, from beside her on the worn loveseat in box C.

"No. Yes. Sort of. I don't know." Katherine lets her head flop backwards onto the back of the loveseat, staring up at the peeling cornices of the ceiling.

"You seem nervous, baby."

"I don't want Jack to be disappointed." Katherine keeps her eyes closed, not wanting to look at Medda, to see the judgement in her eyes – _poor little rich girl, never learned how to do chores_. "I'm terrified about letting him down – I can't cook, I can't clean-"

"Jack don' care 'bout none of that." Medda nudges her, forcing Katherine to meet her eyes. "The only thing you needs to do is show him that you love him. An' that he deserves to be loved."

 _Okay. Love him._ She can do that. Hell, she's already pretty expert at that one. The other one, reminding him that he deserves to be loved, that's a bit harder. Mainly because he's too pig-headed stubborn to believe her when she tells him. But, still. If that's the information that she has to nag him with during the first year of marriage, then so be it.

"Now," Medda smiles, reaching over to squeeze her hand, "you started thinkin' 'bout your dress yet?"

"I'd always thought I'd wear my mother's, but…"

"But?"

Katherine laughs, but there isn't any humour in it. "She isn't coming to the wedding, so I _highly_ doubt she's going to let me wear her dress."

Medda's eyebrows make a break for her hairline. "Well then, we must sort you somethin' out."

Katherine winces. "Oh, Miss Medda, I wouldn't want to put you to any trouble-"

"Nonsense. We's gon' get you a dress together." She says, like it's nothing, then calls down into the half-lit auditorium to one of the showgirls, who has a bag slung over one shoulder and dance shoes over the other, as she picks her through the seats toward the exit. "Hey, Daisy."

The girl in question squints upwards, then raises a hand in greeting. "Hey, Miss Medda."

"Daisy, this is Katherine. She's just got engaged to Jack Kelly."

"No way!" Daisy's face breaks into a wide smile. She has dimples and bright white teeth. Katherine reminds herself that she doesn't need to be jealous about Jack spending time with showgirls. Showgirls who don't have burn scars marring their pretty faces. "So you's the girl he talks our ears off about when he's paintin'."

"That's me."

Honestly, Katherine's still kind of stuck on the idea of wedding dress shopping. It's never been something that's crossed her mind. She's always just assumed that she'll wear her mother's. When they were nine and eleven, respectively, Kate Pulitzer had unlocked her trousseau, a fine oak chest that stood at the end of her bed, and told her and Lucy that they were allowed to look through it, so long as they didn't tear anything.

The number of outfits, even for girls like themselves who had no shortage of fine clothing, had astounded them, all linens and cottons and silks. But the best item, by far, was the beautiful white dress that lay delicately folded at the bottom. One day, when their mother was out and they had managed to evade the clutches of their governess, the two of them had snuck back in and Lucy had fitted Katherine into the too-big dress like how she used to dress her dolls. Katherine remembers standing on a chair in front of the mirror as Lucy fiddled about with clothes pegs on the back of the dress to make it come a little closer to fitting. It looked awful, she knows now, a mess of chiffon on a too-small body, but at the time, she'd never felt more beautiful. Katherine would quite like to feel that way again.

"Let's see the ring, then." Daisy calls up, and Katherine waves a hand over the balcony, laughing at the absurdity of it. The showgirl whistles under her breath. "I didn' expect him to have such good taste – he's a keeper fer sure."

"Yeah," Katherine smiles, "he is."

"Daisy," Medda calls, "why don' you come with us weddin' dress shopping? Katherine's mom an' sisters are in France, so she could do wi' some support."

"O' course!" Daisy looks delighted at the prospect. _At least somebody's excited._ "I love a good weddin'. My sister got hitched last year, too, so I's got all the marriage advice you need."

And that, well, that surprises her. Katherine didn't think people like Daisy were the kind of women who could get married. Of course, perhaps her sister is more… morally refined, but still. Sister of a whore, likely a whore herself, getting married? It's a world away from Katherine's experience. Though, perhaps that's what men like. Experience. Katherine really, really hopes that Jack isn't expecting experience.

"Oh, congratulations!" Katherine laughs, light and airy in a way that she decidedly doesn't feel. _Daisy seems nice. Be polite._ "And any marriage advice would be greatly appreciated."

"Well, my sister always says there's only two things you needs to do to keep a man happy." Daisy calls up to them, cocking her head to one side. _Only two things, now? Medda said one._ Oblivious, Daisy continues, nodding sagely. "Keep his belly full an' his balls empty."

Katherine chokes on air.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Firstly, I'm not just being mean to Daisy. Showgirls of any sort (including actresses) were, at this time, assumed to be, if not sex workers, then at least women of easy virtue. So, yeah, Katherine assuming that she's a prostitute is not out of the ordinary.
> 
> Secondly, I hope you enjoyed my wine pun.
> 
> Finally, Daisy's rather salacious line was delivered to me by my aunt the time she figured out I had started dating a guy. Despite having never tried said advice out, I would recommend listening to neither Daisy, nor my aunt. Listen to Medda. Medda knows best. (If you didn't read that to the tune of the Tangled song, I'm disappointed in you.)


	33. Chapter 33

It seems like an age before the two of them manage to manage to snatch some proper time together again. Until today, they've been living in the stolen moments, the in-between spaces of packed schedules.

Jack picks her up after church, once again waiting outside. She's told him, of course, that he's perfectly welcome to come to the service with her. (If she's honest, Katherine would rather like him to; it's not the same when she's sitting in a pew on the opposite side of the church to her father, both of them staring stoically ahead.) But he just wrinkles his nose and tells her that the only way he's going inside a church is if it's raining.

"I reserved the church today." Katherine tells him as she takes his arm, bouncing on her heels as they set off down the pavement. "I've taken the 26th of August. It's a Sunday, which is rather unconventional, but we want David there and so a Saturday is out of the question."

Jack hums his assent, just pleased, after the work week from hell, to be with her. It's nice, he thinks, when they get to walk like this, how he gets to look down at her for as long as he likes and nobody can say that there's anything wrong with it. She's dazzling in the spring sunshine.

"Reverend Bates said it wasn't a problem that you aren't christened, but that we have to do premarital counselling."

 _Counselling._ Counselling doesn't sound good. Are they going to grill him about his criminal record? He remembers Snyder talking about counsel once, when they got him up in front of a judge for stealing those blankets. Legal counsel, that was it. Does he have to pass some sort of test before he can marry her? Maybe he can get Race to fake a clean record for him. Are criminal records the kind of thing a person can fake?

He can remember that judge's face, the way that he had frowned. The golden eagle mounted on the wall above his head that, if you angled yourself just right, looked like a hat. They'd hit him for that, the policemen had, for moving out of the stand to get the angle right. Those had been nice hits, those ones, because they were in front of the judge. They only laid into him properly after he'd been sentenced.

"Jack, my love, are you okay?"

Katherine's stopped walking. She's frowning up at him. He's screwed up again. His tongue feels three sizes too big for his mouth. It lies there, heavy against his teeth, a leaden weight, immovable, useless.

"Wha- what's that?" _Don't fucking stammer, Kelly, you ain't a kid no more._ "Cousellin' thing?" Katherine narrows her eyes at him. She can tell something's wrong. _Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck-_

"It's like marriage preparation classes. They're only one a week for six weeks, and they're only an hour."

Oh. Marriage preparation. What do they have to do to prepare for marriage, anyway? If they aren't making him spill about his criminal record, that is.

"I thought old Bates was a bachelor." He says, slowly, trying to regain some of his usual lightness.

" _Reverend_ Bates is." Katherine responds, giving him a pointed look.

"Then what's he gonna tell us 'bout bein' married?" Jack frowns. "He don't know nothin'."

Katherine has that same look on her face as when she believes that the apprentices at work are being immeasurably thick. Still, she schools her features into something that vaguely resembles patience. "He's going to talk to us about Biblical marriage."

"Why?" It's almost a whine, a question edged with petulance.

She glares at him. "Jack."

"Fine." He grumbles. "I deserve fiancé of the year though." She rolls her eyes at that and marches them forward at a faster pace. It makes Jack wonder why they don't let women into the army. Katherine would make a fantastic drill sergeant.

Frankly, he thinks he deserves another award simply for remembering that fancy term that means 'future husband'. _It's French_ , _Jack,_ she'd said. _These French, they hafta have a word for ruddy everythin', don't they?_ She'd smiled at that, the kind of smile she reserves for him and only him, the kind that makes him feel like he can fly. _Wait until you come across German._

"Come on, or we'll be late to the Jacobs'."

…

Mayer is out at work on Sundays, in recompense for his time off to keep Shabbat. Jack really shouldn't be as relieved as he is about that. It's hardly as if the man is going to hit him in front of his wife and his kids and Jack's fiancée. But still.

He doesn't have much time to think about it though, because Esther sweeps both of them into a hug the moment they walk through the door. Luckily, Jack has, for once, had the foresight to open the door for Katherine, so that she could enter first. Chivalry, Jack discovers, is an excellent tool for gaining a few seconds of prior warning before somebody touches him.

And meals with the Jacobs don't feel quite so scary with Katherine by his side, his knee resting against her skirts under the kitchen table. Davey looks ecstatic to have Katherine around – all the kid wants is somebody to talk to about obscure clauses of immigration law, honestly, and it's kind of sweet how he and Katherine go back and forth on the subject. Katherine, in Jack's expert opinion, is never prettier than when she's winning an argument. This leads to two things; the first, that Jack rarely wins an argument because he's too distracted, and the second, that he manages to look at very little except her throughout the course of the meal.

Les, however, is enough to divert a good portion of his attention. Jack's pretty sure it isn't normal for a kid like Les to be holed up in school all the livelong week; it's like taking a bottle of seltzer water and shaking it and shaking it for seven hours a day, every day. Sooner or later, it's going to explode. Which all Les' pent up energy does. Usually, all over Jack. Les' mouth works a mile a minute, but that's okay by Jack; despite his affinity for snappy retorts, he likes silence better and Les gives him ample opportunity to just be quiet and listen.

Similarly inclined is Sarah. She's at the table for lunch, but she speaks exactly one word through the whole visit. She says _congratulations_ and then spends the rest of the time absently working at some lace.

When they leave, Esther hugs Katherine again, and then Jack. He's more prepared for this kind of touch from her now, it's slightly more expected, though he's still in the dark as to why she wants to put her hands on him.

It's warm enough, now, in this dry spell, for them to sit outside, so they go to the park that lies midway between the Jacobs' tenement and Miss Morton's boarding house to sit under an oak tree that's full of new growth. Jack gets out his sketchbook and a pencil, resting it on his knees as he leans back against the tree trunk.

"Excuse me, Mr. Kelly, I believe you're supposed to be paying attention to me." Katherine remarks, sitting down next to him and tucking herself into his side, muddy skirts be damned.

She's not mad, not by a mile. It's one of her favourite things about Jack, the way that she doesn't have to being making conversation with him in order for them to spend time together. It's nice to just sit with another person. Just to be.

"Don' worry." Jack rummages around inside of his coat before producing a pocket edition of a book, offering it to her. "I's got somethin' to capture your attention."

The title is embossed in already peeling gold on a forest green cover and Katherine lets her fingers trace over the miniature letters, spelling them out with the tips of her fingers. These pocket editions are sold for cheap at corner shops, the shelf above the dime novel romances and cowboy adventures. That's not the point though. She's had a lot of books in her time, the run of one of the finest home libraries in the city of New York for most of her childhood. Since the fire (and the whole being disowned thing, that too), she hasn't got any of that. But her father started the library for her and her siblings, didn't he? Maybe this is the first book in her new library. Hers and Jack's.

"Wha- I-"

Jack just shrugs, looking at his drawing, not at her, the beginnings of grass and trees being conjured on his paper. "'S the right one, ain't it?"

"Yeah, but-"

"You mentioned you was wantin' to read it last week."

"That wasn't a hint, Jack."

"I know," he rolls his eyes, still not tearing them away from the drawing, now blocking out the pond in front of them, "can't I get my best girl somethin' nice?" When she doesn't answer, he finally turns to look at her, somewhere between embarrassment and amusement. "'S your birthday on Saturday, Kath, an' you's already told me you's gonna kill me if I buys you somethin' 'stead o' puttin' it towards the house fund. Lemme treat you now, yeah?"

And, yes, she supposes she did tell him that. But he's been working so hard to save up enough money for a house deposit, running himself ragged, and she's pretty sure she doesn't even know about half the hours he's taking on. It wouldn't be fair for her to expect a birthday present as well. He's promised her the deposit will be ready by June and shut down her every attempt to suggest that maybe she could contribute. The part of her that writes anonymous columns for a local women's suffrage pamphlet had bristled at that, at first, until she realised how important it was to him. He already expresses enough guilt about not being able to give her the finer things in life, so she's willing to let this one go. So far.

With a sigh, she plants a kiss on his cheek and settles herself against him, cracking the volume open. The park is almost empty, the only noises wind rustling between leaves, distant hoofbeats on the cobbled streets, the scratch of Jack's pencil on the paper. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see a scene spreading across the page, an exact likeness of the nearby pond scattered with swans. Katherine thinks that this might be what contentment feels like.

 _The artist,_ the first sentence of the preface says, _is the creator of beautiful things_. Maybe, Katherine thinks, Oscar Wilde really is onto something.

Eventually, _her_ artist is finished with his drawing. He lays it aside and shifts himself so that he can lie down, his head in her lap. Katherine ought to tell him off, he's probably covering his clothes in grass stains, but everything is just too perfect. And then, because she can't keep her big mouth shut, she ruins it.

"What do you think of Sarah?" She asks, laying her book aside and looking down into his face.

"Whaddaya mean?" Jack murmurs, his eyes closed, half-drowsing already.

"Do you like her?"

"She's a Jacobs, o' course I likes her."

Katherine nods. That's true. It's very hard not to like the Jacobs. She thinks that she could manage it with Sarah, though. "She looks at you at lot."

Jack opens his eyes to look up at her and grins. "You should know better'n anyone that I's pretty easy on the eyes."

He doesn't say anything about quite how easy on the eyes Katherine is, as he looks up at her, but he doesn't need to. It's written across his face, clear as day.

Katherine can't help it though, like picking at a scab, like staring at a scar. "She's very pretty."

"I s'pose." Jack shrugs, propping himself up on his elbows and easing himself off her to sit next to her again, draping his arm around her shoulders. How's a man supposed to keep on breathing when he opens his eyes to see a face like hers, really?

"Oh come on, Jack." Katherine huffs, but tucks herself into his embrace once again.

"Is you _jealous_ , Ace?" He sounds rather too pleased by the notion, gleeful, mischievous, in a way that Katherine knows spells bad news for her.

"Of course not."

"You are!" Jack's grin spreads wider.

"Jack." She looks up, scowling at him. He meets her gaze head-on.

He's smiling as he throws down the gauntlet. "What's you goin' to do 'bout it?"

Katherine mumbles something that sounds like _incorrigible_ , or _insufferable_ , or another of those big words that begin with 'in' that Jack doesn't understand but knows are both frustrated and laced with affection. And then she kisses him, and it's hard to think. In his defence, however, it doesn't take long for him to gather his wits and deepen it, smiling into her mouth.

Katherine can feel it, that cheeky grin pressed against her lips. "Shut up."

"Nah, I don' think I will." Jack pulls away a little, resting his forehead against hers and looking positively gleeful. "See, I's got the most perfect girl in the world. An' it's pretty difficult to see anybody else when she's in the room."

And, well, when he puts it like that.

She knows that she's a fool, that Jack is the last person she needs to worry about straying. He's given up so much for her already. He keeps his promises. He never lets her down. Still, it's difficult when she knows that she's the one on the back foot now, in a way that she never was when they started out. It's difficult when every other woman in the room follows him with their eyes, watching him move with his rumpled, casual grace. She can't compete with that, not anymore. And she certainly can't compete with those women, women like Sarah, who are pretty and practical and altogether unlike her.

He seems to notice the amusement in her eyes dim because he pulls away from her, then tugs her sideways onto his lap.

"Jack, we're in public-" she hisses, looking around at the few people strolling through the park; an elderly couple, a thirty-something walking his dog.

Still, she makes no move to get off him. It's indecent, sure, but she's hardly straddling him. They're not going to get arrested for public indecency. Katherine wonders where along the line of her adventures with her band of newsboys that she came to the conclusion that it's all fair game so long as you don't get arrested.

"What's your book about?" He asks, low and warm, cradling her against him.

It's easier than it should be to relax into his arms, the way that he's holding her. Katherine sighs, tucking her head into the crook of his neck, then begins. "The most handsome man ever to exist-"

"I didn't know I'd had a book written 'bout me-" Jack interrupts.

She continues without pause, lodging an elbow in his stomach as she does so, eliciting a soft _oof_. "- falls in love with a painting of himself and then the painting starts to age while he stays permanently youthful."

"Well that's… disturbin'."

"That's kind of the point." She snuggles a little further into his chest. "Oh, I never told you, I got a reply from Edith yesterday."

Fishing around in the pockets of her skirts, Jack loosening his arms around her, obliging, she produces the envelope. Jack takes it from her fingers, scanning the words with a furrowed brow. His look of concentration is far more adorable than it ought to be.

_Dear Katherine,_

_School is going well. The girls here are nice, the lessons not hard, and the food awful. That is about the long and short of it._

_I cannot say I am surprised about Mother and Father's reactions. Is Ralph coming back from Harvard for the wedding? I miss him. Herbert too. Constance most of all. Letters take forever to come from France. My dress measurements have changed since you last saw me, so I have enclosed a note of my new ones, if you want to get a bridesmaid's dress made. Otherwise, I shall wear my green one. Plan your colours around that._

_Yours,_

_Edith_

" _Is_ Ralph comin'?" He finally asks, handing her the letter back.

"I have the telephone number for his residence in Harvard. I'm going to call tonight and ask him." Katherine replies, preoccupied with tucking the envelope back into her pocket amidst the many folds of fabric. Then she pauses, looks up at him, hesitant. "I thought… I thought I'd ask him to give me away, if that's alright."

Jack has to work hard to keep his fury from bubbling over, but he manages to clamp down on it. Still, he wants to march right back into the New York World to demand that Pulitzer stop being such a vindictive piece of shit and walk his own daughter down the damn aisle. He can't do that though, as much as he wants to; so instead, he says: "'S up to you, Kath. 'S your day. Whatever's gonna make you happy."

"It's _our_ day." She reminds him, a little huffily.

Katherine can tell, of course she can, how angry it's made Jack, her parents refusing to attend the wedding. Her heart aches for him, that not only are his parents absent, but hers as well. Strangely, of the two of them, she's the one who is less bothered by it. She's made her choice, and she'd make it over and over again. Jack's her family now, the newsies, Medda, the Jacobs.

"Yeah, but when you's happy, I's happy."

Katherine sits up a little at that, looking up into his face. "I think that's the sweetest thing you've ever said to me."

"I says nice things to you all the time." Jack laughs, poking her side. "You's the one who takes pleasure in insultin' me."

"I do not!" Katherine laughs in return. "What, you want me to say something sweet?"

"Be my guest." Jack spreads his hands wide, leaning back against the tree trunk.

He's watching her like he did that first night in Medda's theatre, like he's waiting for her to perform. Not in the assessing way her father looks at her, but in the way that an audience holds their breath before the overture begins, as if they know what they're about to see will be the show of their lives.

And with expectations like that, who is Katherine to disappoint? She tilts her chin up and whips out her poetry reciting voice. "I know you. And the bits and pieces that I don't know, I can't wait to learn."

"That's a quote from somethin';" he scoffs, "I can tell by the way you says it." Still, he can't hide the flush that's creeping up his cheeks.

"Only from myself." Katherine shrugs. "I was playing around with some dialogue for a short fiction competition the other night."

"Yeah?" Jack raises his eyebrows, looks at her all impressed and surprised in that way that he does. "I thought you was only interested in journalism."

"I am." She tilts her head to the side, considering. "I just- journalism, it's so… temporary. People throw their papes away each night, you know? I want to do something bigger. Something that will make people sit up and listen for longer than five minutes."

Jack looks at her, long and still, almost to the point that Katherine thinks she's said something stupid. But then he speaks.

"Well, Ace, 'f anybody can do that, 's gonna be you."

…

She draws on that confidence, if she's honest, as she picks up the phone in the hallway of Miss Morton's boarding house that evening and requests Ralph's halls of residence to the operator. It takes her a while to persuade the grumpy night porter to fetch her brother, but eventually he agrees to go and get him, leaving her to listen to the anticipatory buzz of a vacant telephone line. There's a chair next to the table that holds the telephone, in the hall, so she sits down in it, afraid that all the blood will drain down into her feet and send her into a faint if she stands for much longer. And then Ralph picks up.

"Katherine! Is everything alright?" He sounds different on the telephone, his words more carefully enunciated, more prim and proper.

"Yes, yes, quite alright." She breathes, gathering herself. Then, because she doesn't know how to say it: "I'm engaged. To Jack, obviously."

"Wow." A pause. The silence on the line is heavy with things unspoken. "I, uh, congratulations."

"Thank you. We're, um, planning for August the 26th."

"Right. How did Father-"

"They're not coming. He or Mother."

"At all?" He sounds surprised. Katherine wonders why. It's not like their father has ever entertained any sort of notion that he doesn't approve of, from fish being served at breakfast time to Katherine essentially eloping with a trade union leader.

"No."

"Katherine, I-"

She can't bear to hear it, what he's going to say next, so she cuts him off. "Will you give me away?"

"What?"

"Well, Father isn't going to."

" _Katherine_."

"If it's a no, I'll ask somebody else-" Who, she isn't quite sure, but she'll figure something out. _Well, Ace, 'f anybody can do that, 's gonna be you._

"No, no, of course I will. I, just, have – have you thought this through?"

 _For pity's sake._ "I am immovable on this."

A sigh, distant, two-hundred miles away. "Okay. I'll be there."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know that Katherine's actual birthday was in January, but shhhhh artistic license. Comments make my days brighter - also, I need you lot to tell me if the next few chapters get a bit boring, it's just that there's a lot of wedding prep to do x


	34. Chapter 34

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was supposed to come out tomorrow, however, (ironically, once you read the content of this chapter) I have bible study group tomorrow morning, so you're getting it tonight.

Putting anything that Jack would have spent on her birthday towards the house fund had seemed like a really good idea at the time. It truly, genuinely had. But the reality? Well, that's rather more difficult.

The first birthday that Katherine remembers, properly remembers, she was five. Her mother had organised a party for her, and Lucy, aged seven at the time, had thrown a fit ten minutes before it started because it wasn't fair that Katherine got all of these presents when she didn't get anything. The fact that her own birthday would occur just a few months later was entirely irrelevant to a child to whom a few months was an interminable amount of time. Still, the second guests began to arrive, Lucy was, once again, the perfect hostess. Katherine can recall a game of musical chairs and a cake covered in pastel blue icing. Her mother gave her her presents after all the guests had left and Lucy had sat by, sulking, until Katherine had given her one to open and they had been friends again after that. Kate, as always, prompted a thank you, and Katherine gave one, a _thank you, Mother_. Nobody had acknowledged that the gifts were from both of her parents. Her father was at the office. He was always at the office.

And now Katherine's nineteen. She's older than Lucy will ever be. Her Father is still at the office.

What a celebration, indeed, it all is, when she gets to spend her birthday chewing through her own tongue as Miss Morton lectures her on appropriate wedding music over afternoon tea. Personally, at this exact moment, Katherine feels like Chopin's second sonata in b-flat minor might be her music of choice.

Jack, of course, had offered to take the afternoon off work to spend with her, but honestly, both of them knew it wasn't worth it. They will have to start looking for a house soon and they need every extra dollar they can scrape together. Besides, Katherine isn't too sure that Miss Morton wouldn't flat-out refuse to let Jack back in the building after the events of last time.

She is altogether resigned to an hour of discussing whether Pachelbel or Bach is preferable for exiting the church, when Susan, the mousy little maid whose spirit, Katherine is sure, has been broken through a decade of service to Miss Morton, announces the entrance of two men. One is a Mr. David Jacobs. The other, and even Susan can hardly suppress a smile as she says it, is a Mr. Racetrack Higgins.

David looks as well put-together as usual. Race, however, is wearing too-big clothes (Katherine is quite certain she's seen Davey wearing that shirt before) and his normally pale skin is red like it's been scrubbed raw. Race, despite his look of abject discomfort, pauses in re-adjusting the belt on his trousers to wave at her. Katherine stifles a laugh, rising from the table with Miss Morton and triumphantly dragging her former seat across the carpeted floor to make a table of three at an empty table, gesturing for them to follow her. She can hear whispering amongst the other girls, can imagine their comments of _how many men does she have on the go?_ She can't quite bring herself to care.

"What you doing here?" She hisses, holding in the laugh that's bubbling in her throat as the three of them sit down.

Davey offers her a wide, bright smile. "Jack said he had to work on your birthday, so we thought we'd come and cheer you up."

"An' 'pparently, Princess, cheerin' you up involves me havin' to take a bath an' put on Dave's stuffy clothes." Race grumbles, tugging at the lopsided tie until it's loose and half out from under his shirt collar.

Katherine stifles a laugh. "You look very handsome, Race."

"D'ya hear that, Davey? I's handsome." Race says, smugly sinking a little further into his chair and reaching out for one of the cakes on the cake stand which Susan has set in front of them. He looks positively gleeful. "Wait 'til I tell Jack his girl called me handsome!"

"I think this was a mistake." David says, shooting Katherine a long-suffering look. Rolling his eyes, he reaches into his satchel and pulls out a parcel wrapped in brown paper. "Here, Mom bought you bed linens for when you move into your house with Jack."

Katherine has been given a lot of gifts in her life. As a child, every birthday had the promise of thirty or more. As a teenager, new jewellery or dresses were a regular occurrence. As an adult, Jack, despite his lack of funds, finds ways to give her little gifts on an almost weekly basis; sketches in her pigeonhole at work, the latest dime-novel she's been hankering after, impromptu picnic lunches in parks. But this? From a woman that she hardly knows, who clearly doesn't have the money to be throwing around? She doesn't quite know what to say.

"Oh my – oh, David, do thank her for me. These are such a lovely gift."

There's a silence, in which Katherine tries valiantly not to cry, and then Race breaks it. "I ain't brought you no present. I jus' brought my presence."

"He's been planning that line all the way here." Davey deadpans, and then she's laughing, properly laughing, not the little giggles that are politely placed in the corners of the parlour by the other girls at afternoon tea, but properly belly laughing.

Race shoots her a gap-toothed grin and pulls a cigar out of the inside pocket of his jacket, fitting it between his lips and making to get the matches from his other pocket. Before he has chance to light it, however, it is snatched right out of his mouth by a wrinkled hand. Jack may have withered under Miss Morton's gaze, but Race certainly doesn't.

"Hey, that's my cigar!" He cries, looking up into Miss Morton's stony face.

"Smoking is not permitted in the parlour." She turns on her heel and marches off, shooting Katherine a look that very clearly expresses that she is going to get it in the neck later on.

"I'll buy you another." Katherine offers, wincing.

"That ain't the point," Race huffs, "the point is that that old cow," he raises his voice pointedly, "stole my cigar."

Katherine doesn't dare look over to where Miss Morton is sitting – the old cow in question may be seventy-two, but she has the hearing of a bat. David, however, doesn't have such foresight, kicking Race under the table and turning his head to see the reception of the other boy's comment, hoping against hope that it might have escaped her hearing. No dice. Miss Morton looks as if she's about to pop a blood vessel.

"Aren't you two selling papes today?" Katherine asks, trying, in vain, to stop Race from shooting death glares at her elderly landlady.

"Got finished early." Race grins. "I's rivallin' Jackie-boy now."

Davey rolls his eyes. "Jack doesn't sell papes anymore."

"Shuddup." Race shoves Davey, almost sending him toppling right off his chair and onto the carpet.

Katherine trusts Davey not to start an all-out brawl in the middle of the afternoon tea, but she still feels obligated to (hopefully) prevent any more scandals, as amusing as Miss Morton's expression is when she causes them. Therefore, she tries again. "Good headline?"

"The best!" Race turns back to her. "The kuh-zar wants to stop the Boer war an' he's gettin' real pissy wi' the Brits." Miss Morton's mouth drops open at the blatant cursing. Davey drops his head into his hands.

"The who?" Katherine asks, stifling a laugh. She has no idea what Race is on about but, if the 'erster' incident is anything to go by, it should be good.

"The kuh-zar." Race says again, then, at her blank expression, continues. "Y'know, the king o' Russia."

"It's the Czar, Race." Davey sighs, his voice muffled by his face still being pressed into his hands. "Czar."

Maybe, Katherine thinks, it's better that her father is at the office for her birthdays.

…

The following day, Jack lets Katherine drag him to church with her. Apparently, according to her, at least, attending the services shows willing in a way that just turning up to these counselling sessions, which are organised for straight after, doesn't. If him going to church with her is what she wants for her birthday though, then who is he to say no? So, he gets up early on the one day each week that he actually gets to sleep past six am and makes sure his suit is clean and pressed and puts on a tie (even though there is categorically no excuse for wearing a tie on the weekends) and goes to pick her up from the boarding house.

Jack already knows that he doesn't like church. You don't grow up in a lodging house run by nuns and feel indifferent towards church. The thing is, it isn't _churches_ that he hates. He loves churches. He could sit all day in a church, if you'd let him, not to mention the many nights he's picked a lock and slept on a pew during the hard winters. They're pretty, the colours and the stained glass and the draperies. They're all in straight lines, too, symmetrical and neat, the kind of thing that would be easy to draw, easy to copy out in thick graphite lines. It's church services that he doesn't like.

He doesn't like the long sermons on righteous behaviour given by some priest who's never faced the choice between a righteous life and no life at all. He doesn't like the people who look at him with narrowed eyes as if he doesn't deserve to be there. And he certainly doesn't like sitting still for that long on a cold, hard wooden pew. It's alright for these people who eat well enough to have a bit of fat on them to cushion themselves, but for kids who eat a decent meal once in a blue moon, it gets uncomfortable real fast.

People give him funny looks and whisper behind their hands when they walk in, Katherine's arm hooked tightly into his. Jack wonders whether it's to prevent him from turning around and walking straight back out of the door. It's as if Katherine doesn't even notice though, leading him to a pew and sitting them down with her head held high. She's wearing a hat with a ridiculous feather that tickles Jack's nose and makes him want to sneeze, but he got a beating from one of the nuns at the lodgehouse once for sneezing in church, so he swallows it down. Admittedly, he had been sneezing on purpose back then, trying to make the other boys laugh every time the priest (who had a very unfortunate stutter) managed to wrap his lips around an 'ah' vowel sound. Still, he isn't taking any chances.

The service is long and boring and the church is dark and warm. That's how you know it's a rich people church, Jack thinks, when it's warm. Katherine elbows him every time his head starts to dip with tiredness, but luckily she doesn't seem annoyed. At least, not yet. Jack doesn't really know whether you're allowed to be annoyed while in a church. When the next hymn begins to play and she drags him, half-asleep, to his feet, he mouths a _sorry_ at her. Katherine looks at him with such pity in her eyes he can hardly stand it, and he knows with perfect clarity that she's under no delusions as to the reason that he's falling asleep. Somehow, that's worse than her being mad with him, her knowing just how hard he's having to work to give her the life that she deserves.

After the service, they don't go outside like everybody else, but wait, solemn and tight-lipped, in the pew. Katherine has her head bowed and hands together, gloved fingers interlinked in her lap, and Jack can't tell if she's praying or not, or if he's allowed to speak or interrupt, so he just settles for reaching over and taking her hand. She squeezes it, even with her head bowed, so he's guessing that means that they're okay.

Eventually, Reverend Bates reappears in the church and guides them through into a small room behind the altar. Jack figures this must be where he puts that dress thing on before the service, but it's a pretty good setup, honestly, with a little stove and kettle and a neat table with four chairs set around it. The reverend pours them each a cup of tea, then squashes his bulk into one of the chairs. He's the kind of man, Jack can tell, who has never skipped a meal in his life. He knows that Katherine is just the same, that she's never known what it is to be hungry, but it seems different somehow in a way that makes him feel validated in despising the Reverend.

"So, Mr. Kelly," Reverend Bates sets his tea down, speaking through reddened, puffed-up lips, "Miss Pulitzer tells me you don't have a background in the church?"

"I knows bits an' pieces." Jack nods, a little too quickly. He feels desperate and anxious to please in a way that he knows is stupid. It's not like he cares what this man thinks of him. It's not like his opinion matters. "Lodgehouse I lived in for a while was run by nuns, so's I knows the basics."

"And your parents, are they religious?" The reverend asks, staring at Jack a little too intensely, impenetrable and unblinking. His face reminds Jack a little bit of a frog he and the boys once found in a park pond, all swollen and slimy with sweat, bulging eyes and lips.

"Nah, not my old man." He tilts his head to the side, thinking back to the winter when he was five or six. Jack can't remember exactly which, as the winters before his father died were all much the same, cold and hungry and painful, a blur of snow and socks with holes in. "We went to church on Christmas Eve, one year, but he was drunk so they wouldn't let us in."

Reverend Bates looks slightly taken aback by Jack's bluntness and shoots Katherine a look that seems to ask what she's thinking. Jack, luckily, doesn't notice, but Katherine does and she stares the reverend right back down. "And your mother?"

"Never met 'er." Jack shrugs. "She was a whore, though, so I shouldn't think so."

Beside him, Katherine chokes on her tea. The reverend looks at him like he's just admitted to sodomising a golden calf. (Jack's like ninety percent sure that there was something in the Old Testament about that, way, way back when he could still be persuaded into Sunday school by the promise of a glass of milk and a stale biscuit. The nuns had said something along those lines, right? Oh well. He's said something wrong, as usual.)

And then the reverend looks like he wants to hit him. Jack doesn't know exactly what he's said wrong, but he sure as hell knows what a man who wants to hit him looks like. Reverend Bates is about the same height as him, he knows, having sized him up when they walked in, an old habit from the streets. Jack's fitter, but Bates has considerably more weight to throw around. Bates also has the advantage of being a minister. Jack isn't any kind of expert on the law, or sin, for that matter, but he's pretty sure that punching a minister, even in self-defence, is worse than punching a normal person.

His eyes light on the reverend's hands, clenched into fists on the table, and feels sweat start to gather under his arms and at his shirt collar. It's okay, he's been hit before. He can take it. Let the minister get a few good punches in, don't hit him back, and maybe, just maybe, he might still be able to marry Katherine.

A hand on his knee under the table. Jack flinches, knee jerking up into the underside of the table, rattling the china and narrowly missing crushing the hand on it. Droplets of tea sail through the air and land on the tablecloth. Those stains will be hell to get out, Jack thinks, distantly. Then he realises that the hand is just Katherine's, and he wants to crawl under the table and never come out.

"What Jack means to say," Katherine says, using that soothing tone she has when one of the little newsies has scraped up their knee real bad, "is that his mother was a _prostitute_. He's not being vulgar, Reverend."

She doesn't look at him. _Prostitute. Oh. Well. Maybe whore wasn't the right word to use after all._ Katherine's mad, she must be mad, she must be. The reverend, at least, looks pacified, his fists unclenched.

"Well, I-" the man swallows down whatever comment he'd clearly been intending on making, the folds of fat at his throat jiggling, and his tone turns caustic, "I would thank you not to use such language in the house of God again, Mr. Kelly."

Jack wonders where God is, if this is supposed to be his house. He wonders if God has been on vacation for a while. He wonders if he'll ever come back.

…

When they leave the church, Katherine steers them away from the path back toward both Jack's apartment and the boarding house, and instead toward a nearby park. Jack doesn't speak the entire journey. It's almost as if he hasn't registered that they're going the wrong way. Katherine isn't stupid, she knows something is wrong, she just doesn't know what it is. But with the way that Jack's jaw is clenched, teeth bitten tightly together as if to dam a flow of curses, she reckons it's going to take quite a bit of coaxing.

He remains silent when Katherine sits him down on a bench and goes over to a little stand selling sandwiches. It's only when she sits down next to him and presses a ham sandwich into his hand that he actually looks at her.

"Talk to me." She says, unwrapping the paper from around her own sandwich and taking a bite.

"'S stupid." Jack finally responds, in a voice that sounds like he hasn't spoken for days, the toe of his boot drawing patterns in the dusty earth.

"You couldn't be stupid if you tried. Spill."

"I jus'-" Jack sighs, running a hand over his face in exhaustion, "-how can you sit there, an' jus'… listen to him, like he's tellin' the truth?" When Katherine doesn't respond, he looks over to her and meets with a thoroughly confused expression. He sighs, the sandwich she bought, still wrapped in yesterday's newspaper, heavy as lead in his lap. "Like, _God loves you_ an all that?"

Katherine frowns, swallowing the bite of her sandwich heavily. "God does."

"Psh. You, maybe." Jack scoffs, returning his gaze to the picture he's drawn in the dirt. Soil has coated the toe of his boot and the picture doesn't look anything at all like the dog it was supposed to be. "'F God was real, the Refuge would never have existed. My old man wouldn't have beaten the stuffin' outta me. An' if God's sat up on some cloud playin' favourites, then I don't want nothin' to do with him."

Katherine's expression hardens and she stiffens. She looks like she's been carved from granite. "You shouldn't speak about your Creator like that."

" _Creator?_ " Jack casts her a disbelieving look. "The only person as created me was a dockyard worker who knocked up some whore."

"Jack." Katherine hisses, turning around to look back at the path, praying that she won't see any scandalised young families eavesdropping on their conversation.

"Oh, my apologies," he bites out, standing up from his seat and yanking his cap off to run a hand through his hair, "I means a _prostitute,_ I ain't tryna be _vulgar._ "

The sandwich, still wrapped in its newspaper, flies off his lap and onto the ground. Katherine focuses in on that, reaching down to pick it up, keeping her voice as low and level as she can. "Jack."

She will not start crying. He's just hurt, hurt and angry, blowing off steam, and her words were ill-chosen. Her words always seem to be ill-chosen these days. Perhaps she's losing her touch. Wouldn't that be a fine thing, to peak at nineteen.

"It's all well an' good to sit in a church an' pray, but it don't fix nothin' for the little guy." He snarls, as if he hasn't heard her at all – and maybe he hasn't, maybe he's so far gone he's stopped listening altogether, like he does sometimes, the times that she just has to wait it out and let him come and bury his face in her shoulder in his own time.

His hands have been thrown up in the air. People are starting to look over. The sensation of being watched makes her skin prickle and blood rush to her cheeks. Still, she's trying. "Those things, Jack, they're human. It's human evil. Not God's."

Jack rubs his hands over his face, pressing balled fists into his eye sockets until colours explode behind his eyelids. "But 'f he loves me so much as you say he does, then why's my back covered in scars? Huh?"

Katherine knows that he's got a point. She'll have to ask Reverend Bates about how to explain theodicy, because faith isn't as simple as Jack is making it out to be. But she knows where he's coming from, where he's at in his head right now, and it's the only thing keeping her from yelling at him for blasphemy, so she holds tight to it with both hands and faces his questions head-on.

"Because people have free will. God isn't going to take that away. People have to be able to choose good or bad."

"But why?"

And there goes all of her sympathy. He's acting like a three-year-old. "If we didn't have free will, Jack, I'd have obeyed my father and been the good little girl and followed the life set out for me. Somehow, I don't think that'd be a better world." Her tone is snappish, and he looks like she's just slapped him. _Okay, Katherine. Don't push him away._ Softer: "Not my life without you."

He frowns at that, forehead creasing. "I don't-"

Katherine closes her eyes and interrupts him. "I understand that you don't feel very loved by God, right now. But I love you and my faith is important to me." Opening them, Jack is just looking at her (finally), completely unreadable. She judges that it's safe to carry on. "I expect you to come to church with me, when we're married. And we're going to have our children christened, and they're going to go to church every week too. They're going to grow up knowing that God loves them, even if they take after their father and hate the clergy."

She holds out his sandwich to him, but he doesn't take it from her hand, just looks at her. Katherine's heart drops down through her stomach and right out of her, landing, still beating, on the path between them. And then Jack comes, slow and stiff, but he does, and sits back down next to her on the bench. That's enough to put her heart back in her chest where it belongs.

"Okay." He nods. Takes the sandwich. Unwraps it, breathing heavy, not meeting her eyes. "I ain't… I ain't on board wi' this. This _God loves you_ thing. But 'f it's that important to you, then, okay."

He bites into it, doesn't say a word. Katherine waits a moment, then leans into him, a gentle shoulder barge like the one he'd given her the first night she kissed him, all those months ago, in his penthouse, looking out across New York. "Thank you."

"Thank you." Jack says, quiet, around a mouthful of sandwich. Katherine frowns at him, too confused, even, to correct his godawful table manners. Seeing her expression, he clarifies, swallowing it down. "For lovin' me anyways."

And he is thankful. Because he's difficult and stubborn and angry at the world and he knows it. And still, she's chosen him. That's the ring that he bought, on her finger. Why, he'll never know. This absolute angel, and she's chosen him. If there's anybody who can make him believe in God, it's Katherine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The third movement of the Chopin piece that Katherine references is what basically everybody knows as the funeral march. My jokes are actually hilarious if you have extensive knowledge of classical music. Also, the headline is a real one from the New York World on the date that this is set – I had great fun trawling through the old newspaper archives. Comments make me very happy :)


	35. Chapter 35

The weekly premarital counselling sessions lead them through April and into May.

Jack works extra hours at the Bowery, grinning when Medda tells him that her and Daisy are taking Katherine to shop for her wedding dress and thanking the woman profusely. His smile dims, however, when she asks some more probing questions about how he’s feeling. (She always does this, asks about how he’s _feeling_ , as if Jack’s supposed to know himself.)

“I jus’, I dunno what I’s doin’.” Jack shrugs, wiping the excess paint off his brush on the edge of the paint can, watching it drip back to join the swirl of blue in the bottom. “I dunno how to make her happy.”

“Y’know what you could do?” Medda calls from where she’s organising sheet music in the orchestra pit.

“Hm?”

“Stop takin’ overtime hours at work. You’s workin’ yourself into the ground.”

Jack blanches. “But the house-“

“Is somethin’ that you can already afford.” She looks up at him and Jack wonders how somebody shorter than him, even when he’s not stood on a stage, can make him feel so small. “Stop takin’ those overtime hours, Jack. An’ for pity’s sake, eat somethin’.”

He grumbles incoherently, turning back to the set piece. She’s _right,_ he knows, and that’s what makes it so irritating. He knows that he’s being stupid, working himself into the ground. It’s just… he wants to do this right. Do right by Katherine.

As if she’s heard him – and who knows, maybe he said it out loud, maybe Medda is just a mind-reader – Medda arches a brow and chastises him further. “She loves you. She chose you. Quit gripin’.”

And yes, Jack reflects, Medda must be onto something, because Katherine wouldn’t be putting up with all of his complaining if she didn’t love him a heckuvah lot. All the premarital counselling sessions finish in much the same way, after all, with Katherine thanking the reverend and then listening to Jack complain about the whole thing as he walks her home. It usually goes something like this:

“Do you have a complaint every week, Jack?”

“No. I jus’ don’t like him. He’s judgy.”

“He’s a minister, he’s not judging us.”

“He’s definitely judgin’ us.”

That is, until the final session. Week six. For the first time in the entire endeavour, Jack actually goes into this session feeling positive. And if he’s feeling that way because this is the last session, well, does it really matter? In fact, he’s feeling very optimistic, right up until…

“As to your, ahem, physical relationship.”

Bates says the words as if they taste like vomit. Even as euphemistic as they are, they sound strange spilling from the lips of this man, with his tightly buttoned collar and thick-lensed glasses. Jack has to stifle a snort, something that earns a rather vicious kick under the table from Katherine. Honestly, Jack has no idea how he ever thought she was a high society lady.

“It is important, Mr. Kelly,” the reverend turns to him, his eyes swollen beyond their true size through the magnifying section of the bifocal spectacles, “for you not to be… rough with your wife.”

And until now, it’s been faintly ridiculous, funny, even. But that? The implication that he’s such a beast that he’d hurt Katherine, _his_ Katherine, because he didn’t give a damn to control himself?

“What kinda man d’you think I am?” He snarls, hands curling into fists beneath the table.

“Jack.” Katherine warns, her voice low, placing a soothing hand on his arm. After the first session, she knows better than to try and touch his leg under the table where he can’t see her hand coming. Her touch stills him, but she can feel the tension thrumming in his muscles even through the thick, soft material of his suit jacket and shirt.

“All I mean, Mr. Kelly, is that the primary purpose of marriage is for procreation.”

Katherine resists the urge to grimace at the reverend’s words. She certainly hopes that isn’t what Jack is expecting, at least, because although they’ve talked about kids, that’s years down the road. She has her career to think about, after all.

“I want you to be aware, given your lack of church background, that it is not something to be indulged in on a whim.” Bates turns his gaze on Katherine, then. “The same for you, Miss Pulitzer. You must remember that it is a wife’s role to submit to her husband and that it is your role to…” the reverend’s eyes flick towards Jack, his lip curling, “…please him in this way.”

Jack has two kinds of silence, Katherine’s learned. The first kind is the kind that she most often sees, the comfortable kind where he’s let his guard down enough to not focus on smart quips and to just be. The second kind is the kind she sees for the remainder of the session – the gritted teeth silence that only happens when he’s being quiet because if he speaks he’d probably yell at somebody.

“My love,” she asks as they walk away from the church, hurrying to keep up with Jack’s long strides, “why are you angry?”

“He thinks jus’ because I’m poor that I dunno how to treat a lady.” Jack snaps, stopping and turning round, aiming a kick at the little wall that runs beside the path for good measure.

His voice is too loud for the graveyard that they’re in, a pool of quiet in the centre of the city, where noise never seems to permeate. As a child, it had reminded Katherine of an oasis, this cemetery, cool and green in amidst the city’s dust and smog. She can only count her blessings that they’re in a part of it that’s tucked away enough that they probably won’t be overheard.

Jack snarls, oblivious. “ _Don’t be rough wi’ your wife_ – what does he think I am, some sorta monster?”

He’s not, that’s the thing, he’s not a monster. Other people, they see Jack like he is now, angry and lashing out, but don’t take the time to peel back the layers. Katherine can understand how he might seem intimidating – this tall, strong, strike leader who can throw punches as easy as breathing – but she can’t understand how anybody could be afraid of him. Which is why she has no qualms about wandering over and taking hold of his hands.

“Jack, he probably says that to every husband-“

“Yeah, well, he shouldn’t hafta.” Jack snaps, but it’s softer now that she’s closer. He won’t look at her. “Hurtin’ ladies, hurtin’ kids – it ain’t right.”

And, well. It hadn’t occurred to her that Jack’s idea of rough and hers might be slightly different. Reverend Bates had been, of course, referring to him not making… unreasonable demands of her. And by the way that he’d snorted, a _you think **I’m** the one who’s going to be making demands in this relationship? _snort, Jack had surely heard that part of the message loud and clear. But for Jack, rough extends beyond that in a way that she knows she’ll never understand. When rough means taking a whip to somebody, or beating them to a pulp, it’s more of an insult.

“Hey.” She cups his face, forcing him to look at her. “I never thought you’d hurt me. Not in a million years.”

“Yeah, well.” Jack breathes out through his nose, heavy and laboured, like a horse recovering from a race. “You best ignore what he said to you in there an’ all.”

“What, you don’t want me to submit to you?” Katherine arches a brow, amused. Tucking her arm through his, she guides them to continue down the path.

Jack scoffs. “D’you really think I’d be marryin’ _you_ ‘f I wanted somebody submissive?”

“Rude.” Katherine says, with not a hint of offence. “I could be submissive.”

Jack looks at her, disbelieving, and she stares him right back down. He rolls his eyes. “Well, I don’t want you to be. I likes you jus’ the way you are, thank you very much.” Then, hesitant, not quite meeting her eyes, he continues. “An’ what he said about it bein’ ‘bout my… needs, you knows that’s wrong, right?”

Was it? Was it wrong, what the reverend had said? Because everybody seems to think that way. Even Daisy had acknowledged that Jack would have… needs. And she’s hardly an expert on marriage, as much as she might talk about her sister. No, Jack’s being kind. As always.

“I… I want you to be happy.”

“No, no, Ace.” Jack says, almost panicked, removing his arm from hers and instead wrapping it around her waist to put her closer to him as they walk. “I’s happy jus’ to be marryin’ you. I want you, hell but I want you,” he breaks off, half-laughing, humourless, “but this ain’t about me, okay? Anythin’ that you ain’t comfortable with-“

“I understand.” Katherine cuts him off. Then, when he just keeps looking at her – because damnit if he doesn’t seem to have some sort of sixth sense for when she’s swallowing down words that she wants to say – she continues. “You know – you know that I don’t want children right away, don’t you?” She doesn’t want to do this, doesn’t want to have this conversation, but they’ve got to, they have to -

“Well, o’ course, Katherine.” Jack half laughs again, like it’s obvious. She ploughs on.

“Because, I’m not being that – I’m not just going to give up everything –“

“Ace. Breathe.” He says, stepping up into her space and pulling her into a hug, turning his head to press a kiss to the shell of her ear and tell her, low-voiced and firm: “I love you. Not some imaginary girl who’s gonna drop her job at the papes to start poppin’ out kids. Sure, I wants ‘em one day, but, I’s meanin’ like, five, ten years down the line. I ain’t – I don’ wanta force nothin’ on you that you ain’t ready for. If we has to tag-team stayin’ at home wi’ ‘em while the other goes out to work, then so be it. Who knows? Who cares? This ain’t about that. ‘S about me an’ you. Yeah?”

Katherine nods into his chest. “Okay.” Not daring to look up at him, she steels herself to continue. “How – how do we –“

“Oh.” She can tell that Jack is reddening just from his voice. He coughs uncomfortably. Does she really have to be asking him questions like this when she’s pressed quite so close to him? “Well, uh. I dunno much. There’s these sheaths as yous can get from the barbers or the drugstore. I can, uh, I can get us some o’ those.”

“Okay.” She nods, still not looking at him, instead propping her chin on his shoulder and staring determinedly at the gravestones. At this particular moment, Katherine would rather like to be beneath one of them. “I tried to read up on it, but there isn’t much. My friends at the suffrage magazine suggested getting something called a pessary from the drugstore, but it’s difficult to find out anything.” She huffs out a breath. “Damn Anthony Comstock.”

Jack chuckles, a triumph in itself, then pulls away a little, looking down at her, smiling and fond, and she wonders why she was ever even worried. Her contacts in the suffrage movement had taken it so seriously, when she’d written to them, which she’s of course grateful for, but they had also been disappointed in her. _Reconsider,_ they’d told her, _you’re independent. Don’t give that up._ Like marrying Jack was some sort of loss. Like it ever could be.

“I agree with you on that.” Jack grins. “Ol’ Anthony took all the fun outta the papes.”

Smacking the back of his head for his cheekiness, she pulls him along to carry on walking. “What’s this big mysterious plan for this afternoon, then?”

He looks a little shy, when he tells her, a flush rising in his cheeks. “I’s found a house.”

“You’ve what?”

“I’s booked us a viewin’.” Jack smiles down at her, scratching at the back of his neck with his free hand. “‘S not – ‘s sorta a project, it ain’t lookin’ how it’s s’posed to, yet, but ‘s all jus’ things the bloke called _cosmetic._ I reckons I can fix it up on the weekends, get it sorted ‘fore we moves in.”

 _Cosmetic. Right._ That’s a little harder for her to believe, now, as Jack speaks quietly to the estate agent, who hands over the keys and tells them to leave them under the plantpot beside the front doorstep if they get finished before he returns in an hour. It’s rather unlike any sort of exchange Katherine’s seen when accompanying family members shopping for houses before, but, then again, the houses that she’s looked at haven’t been quite this dilapidated. As Jack converses with the other man, she tries to school her features back into a little of the excitement she had been feeling until she’d seen the house. 

It doesn’t have much curb appeal, Katherine has to admit. It’s a tall and thin red brick structure in the middle of a terrace. The paint on the window frames is peeling and slightly mouldy, and there is moss growing between the bricks.

It’s small, inside, a hallway with stairs, a little living room just big enough for a couch and an armchair, a kitchen with a stove that looks like it hasn’t been used in forty years. The window above the kitchen sink looks out onto a desolate little backyard surrounded by a high brick wall, weeds sprouting from the gaps between the paving slabs. Upstairs is a bedroom barely big enough to fit a double bed, and a boxroom that’s even smaller. A second, rickety spiral staircase that looks like it’s been cobbled together from Hudson River driftwood leads up into an unfurnished, half-converted attic space that rises up into the eaves.

Katherine hasn’t registered quite how much she’s giving up to be with Jack until now. The beams that support the eaves are strung together with cobwebs so thick that she’s half convinced that it’s them that are supporting the roof, not the beams themselves.

“You hate it, don’ you?” Jack says, quiet from beside her.

He rather wants to kick himself. Why had he ever thought that this was a good idea? He should have just bought the place and done it up before he brought her here. More fool him for wanting her input. What must she think of him? Can’t even afford a place that’s got a fucking bathroom installed.

“No, no, I don’t hate it!” She says, her voice too squeaky to be entirely truthful.

“‘S okay if you do.” Jack looks down at the floorboards, toeing out a pattern in the layer of dust that covers them. “I know it ain’t the nicest place.”

The thing is, it’s only now she’s here that he knows that. The house had seemed nice, when he’d first come to see it, on his own. He’d been excited about the roof, only five years since it’s been redone and not a leak to be found anywhere. And the stove’s old, sure, but it works just fine, so they don’t even need to replace the kitchen. It’s warm too, proper thick insulation in the walls, the kind that must be heaven to live in through the winter. And within budget. It’s taken ninety-hour work weeks and a lot of commissions for a lot of people like Pulitzer with more money than sense, but he’s done it, he’s scraped together a deposit made of blood, sweat, and tears. And it’s still not enough. Not enough to have somewhere that doesn’t need a bathroom installing and lights fitting to the walls and the eaves insulating and plastering. And he hadn’t even noticed.

Why would he? This is heaven. It has five whole rooms, plus a hallway. For two people. That’s way more rooms than two people need. It’s warm, and dry, and has somewhere to make meals. But then Katherine walks in.

He’s used to her overshadowing everything else in the room. That’s just her. She walks in and he can hardly look at anything else. She _glows_. But when she does, she lights up the things that were hidden before. The cobwebs and dust. Stains on the walls, holes in the plaster of the ceilings. Pipes leading nowhere, no baths or taps connected to them. How had he ever thought that he could give her anything like what she deserves?

“It’s okay.” Katherine says slowly, looking around. Jack wants to clap his hands over her eyes, stop her from looking, no, more than that, stop her from _seeing._ “Like you said, it’s all just cosmetic.”

“Right.” Jack nods, the word heavy in his throat. Katherine doesn’t miss it, the way that he swallows, nervous, the hand that comes up to rub at the back of his neck. “The owners, they’s got plumbin’ goin’ up to the boxroom an’ electricals up to here. They jus’ ran outta money ‘fore they could finish it. All the complicated stuff’s done. I reckon ‘f I ropes the boys in we can sort it ourselves, without payin’ nobody.”

 _He’s really thought about this._ Katherine doesn’t know why she’s surprised. Jack rarely brings things to her, things as big as these, at least, without having thought them through. He might seem impulsive – and he is, sometimes, if it’s minor and seems like a good idea at the time, that’s often reason enough for him to jump at an opportunity – but things like this, they’re more calculated. She often forgets that he thinks a lot more deeply about things than she gives him credit for.

“You really think so?” He’s thought about it, sure, but that doesn’t mean she’s convinced. Her idea of complicated and his idea of complicated are probably quite different, after all.

“You can do a lot just wi’ elbow grease, Kath.” Jack shrugs, looking down at her. She’s biting her lip as if that will keep all the words inside that she wants to say.

“‘S okay ‘f you wanta change your mind, love.” He says, hating himself with every word. Why can’t he just be a selfish bastard like everybody else? She said yes, that’s binding, isn’t it? But here he is, offering her an out once again. Jack thinks he might die if she leaves. He knows he will if she goes ahead with this only to resent him for it. “‘S different imaginin’ a life wi’ somebody than actually livin’ it.”

Katherine turns to him, gaping. He’s so clever, but sometimes he’s a complete idiot. She might not be sure about the house, but she’s sure about _him._ “Jack Kelly, don’t you ever talk like that.”

“Ace-” He sighs, looking pained.

“No. I chose you.” She says, solid as rock, stepping in front of him and taking his face in her hands. The stubble on his face prickles against her palms. “And I would choose you over and over and over again. So don’t you dare.” When he nods, meeting her eyes, she leans up to press a kiss to his lips, determined and firm, relishing the way that the beginnings of his facial hair rasp against her skin. “You should put an offer in.”

“Yeah?” The smile is small, but it lingers in the corners of his mouth.

She turns away from him, examining the room, her head cocked to one side. “I think… maybe if I cleaned it up a little. Some nice furniture. This could make a pretty nice master bedroom. What do you think?”

“Yeah.” He nods, the smile spreading wider, and catches hold of her hand, pulling her towards the stairs. “An’, right, c’mere-” he breaks off to descend the spiral staircase backwards, despite her protests, keeping his hands on her waist to steady her the whole time, even though it’s completely unnecessary; then leading her through to the little bedroom, “- in here, yeah, I’s thinkin’ a guest room? So’s you can have Constance to stay, an’ Edith. An’ _one day,_ when you’s ready, a nursery.”

“Okay.” Katherine bites her bottom lip, suppressing a grin.

“Yeah?” Jack looks as happy as she’s ever seen him. Grabbing her hands, he leads her through to the boxroom, trembling with excitement. “So then over here, we’s got plumbin’, so bathroom, right, an’ then downstairs,” he tugs her down the stairs, taking them two at a time, “there’s nothin’ wrong wi’ the kitchen, ‘s just needin’ a bit o’ paint an’ it’ll be good as new. An’ then the backyard-” he points out the window, “-we can have window boxes, an’ bird feeders, an’ I reckon we can pull up some o’ the slates an’ put, like, soil in, grow some vegetables, y’know? Or flowers, if you wants – then, then you could sits an’ write outside, on fine days.”

And Katherine doesn’t know if she’s going crazy, but she can sort of see it, when Jack says things like that. He always tells her that she sees connections that he’d never spot, but sometimes she wonders what it’d be like to look at the world through his eyes, where everything is colour and light and potential. For somebody who has been so broken down, so beaten and bruised, his optimism is incredible. He sees the hope in things, where she can’t see anything at all. Maybe that’s why he humoured her with her coverage of the strike all those months ago. Maybe Jack just saw the hope in her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My life is literally just writing thesis proposals at the moment as the kitchen in my house is renovated. Please save my sanity by leaving a comment. 
> 
> Also, 'sheaths' was a common historical word for condoms, which is both interesting and cringe. Anthony Comstock enacted the Comstock Act in the 1870s which forbade the publication of any information concerning contraception, amongst other things. He also was instrumental in setting up the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, which literally just went around arresting people for doing things that they thought were inappropriate. This made it really difficult to find out anything about birth control in New York at this time. Later sources, such as Margaret H. Sanger’s 1917 pamphlet ’Family Limitation’, were extremely informative and a big proponent of the pessary (however, I would never want to use one – they sound really damn uncomfortable). She also was pretty ground-breaking in her mention of the female orgasm and condemnation of marital rape (though she also had some vaguely eugenics-esque beliefs, so that’s... unfortunate). Basically, I went down a major rabbit hole about historical contraception and it was unbelievably fun.


	36. Chapter 36

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not very happy with this chapter, but it needed to be done. Also, Daisy turns up again, because everybody loved her. 
> 
> Comments, as always, make me very happy.

“We’re goin’ to try somethin’ new.” Davey announces, his mind already on the next topic as he slides the filled-out mortgage forms back across the kitchen table to Jack.

“Thanks.” Jack slips them neatly back into their folder.

The man at the bank had said it would take a week to get them approved. In a week, he might be buying a house. That’s one thing he’d never expected from his life. That said, he’d never expected to be working in an office or living in his own apartment or getting paid to draw or be getting married to the most perfect woman on the surface of the planet, so Jack is just going to take the good stuff while it keeps coming and try not to overthink it. His rather pleasant thought spiral, however, is somewhat dimmed when Davey produces, from his satchel, what can only be described as a brown sausage with fingernail marks in it.

“The hell is that?” Jack asks, leaning back in his chair in a vain attempt to put as much distance between himself and whatever that thing is as possible.

“This is going to help you learn your numbers.” Davey grins, holding it aloft as if it’s sceptre, not something that Jack would personally describe as some sort of terribly deformed stick. “I’ve been reading this report by a man called Pringle Morgan who has been studying people who struggle with letters and numbers like you do. Other people have responded to his report and said that making the symbols tactile can help you to learn them.”

 _Tactile? And who the hell calls their kid Pringle? That’s just cruel._ Jack arches one eyebrow, remaining thoroughly unimpressed. “And that makes that…”

Davey frowns at him, as if the answer should be obvious, as if with his little speech he imagined that Jack must have received some sort of divine revelation as to the identity and purpose of the object. “This is a number one. Well, it’s a number one snake. Apparently by associating the symbols with animals, it can help you to grasp them.”

“That’s s’posed to be a snake?” Jack squints, leaning forward to examine it.

Getting closer to it, it looks vaguely as though there’s something at the upper end that might be a forked tongue, but the link is tenuous at best. When he looks up in disbelief at Davey, the other boy looks highly offended.

“Of course it’s supposed to be a snake, what else would it be?”

“Honestly, Dave,” Jack sits back in his seat, folding his arms, “I ain’t got a clue, but that looks about as much like a snake as I do.”

“Well,” Davey puffs out a breath of air, the longer hairs that have drifted over his forehead defying gravity for a few seconds, “it was only for a demonstration. I brought clay so that we can make them together.”

Jack doesn’t look excited by the prospect of clay; he’s spent too long building up his front of bravado to have it undone by something as unimportant as excitement. Still, Davey sees a slight shift in his friend’s posture, slightly less tension in the muscles, a quirked eyebrow, a glint to his eyes and his smile that wasn’t quite so bright before.

“Clay, huh?”

Clay, it turns out, comes under the remit of Jack’s artistic talents. That’s made excruciatingly obvious from the second he gets his hands on it, shaping it with clever fingers. Still, his talent for it comes as a surprise to nobody more than Jack himself.

He’s never had proper clay before, clay like this that is bought from craft stores and air dries on the windowsill. In the Refuge, though, Snyder sealed up all the windows to stop them prying them open and slipping out. He even did it above the third floor, after little Adam got so desperate he decided that it was better to throw himself out of a fifth storey window than face another day behind it. Jack misses Adam sometimes, with his gap-toothed smile and his freckles. His death was what prompted the sealant. The problem was that the sealant was the cheap stuff and it took a couple of days to dry. A couple of days was all Jack had needed. It was gummy and thick, the brown sealant, the viscous kind that gets stuck under your fingernails. Jack’s fingernails were always coated with it because each night he’d slide out of bed and scrape away any fresh sealant that he could find, adding it to the ball he secreted under a loose floorboard so that he could take it out and form it and reform it. It had stunk to high heaven, that stuff, acrid and leathery, but little Jack hadn’t minded. It had been nice to have something that was just his. He’d never had a toy that he didn’t have to share, before, so it felt important. And this clay is even better, because it doesn’t smell, and he can clean it out from under his fingernails as easy as anything.

“How are you so good at this?” Davey huffs, gaping as Jack adds feather detailing to the body of his clay swan, the tail end of the number two, with a single, dirt-encrusted fingernail.

“I ain’t.” Jack shrugs, not looking up, wholly engrossed in his task. “‘S jus’ a swan, Dave.”

“Jack,” David rolls his eyes, “look at mine.”

Finally, Jack looks up. He frowns, cocks his head to one side. “What’s that s’posed to be?”

“A ferret. A number three ferret.”

“You’s got the choice of all the animals in the world an’ you go wi’ a _ferret_?”

“It seemed right.” Davey says, looking back down at his creation and suddenly feeling very much like Dr. Frankenstein. “It clearly wasn’t.” Jack gives him a pitying look.

“Nah, you jus’ needs to…” he waves a hand vaguely, “…shape the snout a little more.”

When Crutchie walks in, he’s confused about all the laughing that’s coming from the kitchen.

Later, when Davey’s left and Jack is drying the dinner plates, he casts a glance over his shoulder to where Crutchie is sat at the table. Normally, the kid is full of stories about work from the second he gets home until the second he goes to bed, but no such luck tonight. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” Crutchie nods. Then, quieter. “Do y’think they’s goin’ to let me live at the lodgehouse again? Now that I’s got a proper job?”

Jack almost drops the plate he’s holding. “What are you on about? Crutchie, we’s jus’ gon’ get you another person to take my room. You ain’t movin’.”

When Crutchie looks up, blinking because he’s _not going to cry, damnit,_ there are tears in his eyes. “My wage can’t cover the rent-“

“You’s family.” Jack says, his heart damn near breaking in two that Crutchie thinks he’s a bad enough brother to leave him to fend for himself. “You think I’s jus’ goin’ to leave you in the lurch? I’ll keep payin’ your rent ‘til you’s gettin’ more than a ‘pprentice wage.”

“Oh.” Crutchie is at a bit of a loss. “Kath-“

“Already knows, an’ she okayed it. Why’d you think Dave an’ I are takin’ so long over the books? We’s workin’ out where the finances are goin’ to go once we’s married.” Jack rolls his eyes and turns back to the plates, trying not to let the hurt show on his face. “For someone so smart, you’s real dumb.”

Crutchie doesn’t fire back with something snippy, but instead: “Dave’s real good, ain’t he?”

Jack nods. Davey, clueless as he sometimes is, is probably one of the best friends he’s ever had. Seriously, who tries to teach their illiterate friend his numbers, then, after being yelled at by said illiterate friend, goes off and reads obscure medical reports to try and figure out a solution? No sort of friend that Jack’s ever heard of, outside of David Jacobs.

“Yeah, he is.”

A pause. “I’s glad you chose him for your best man. He’s been over the moon ‘bout it, y’know.”

“Hey, y’know it ain’t ‘cos I didn’t want you, right?” Jack asks, setting the plate and tea towel down on the side and wandering over to lean against the table, propping himself up on his elbows and looking Crutchie straight in the eye.

Crutchie is reminded of the first time Jack got back from the Refuge, the only time they let him out rather than him escaping. Crutchie had been eight and clung to Jack the second he got back, whining about how he’d rather have been in the Refuge with him. Jack’s face had hardened at that, and he’d sat Crutchie down and told him just how glad he ought to be that he hadn’t been in the Refuge. Jack’s tone isn’t as harsh this time, but there’s something of that eleven-year-old boy still about him, hiding in the hollows of his cheeks, less pronounced, these days, but there nonetheless. Want, Crutchie realises, never really leaves you. It becomes a part of you, settles in your bones and grows with you, twisting itself into the marrow like the ivy that strangles tree trunks.

“‘S jus’, I didn’ want Race gettin’ jealous.” Jack shrugs, then shoots Crutchie a grin. “‘Sides, I needs somebody in the pews to wrangle the boys an’ make sure they ain’t stealing the hymn books or shit like that. Somehow, I feel like Davey ain’t gonna be the best at that. You, though? You can just soak ‘em wi’ your crutch if it gets too rowdy.”

Crutchie doesn’t know what it is about Jack, how he always seems to know exactly what charming thing to say, but it works. He sighs in mock exasperation. “I’s pretty sure it’s a sin to soak somebody in a church.”

Jack grins, reaching across the table to clap the other boy on the shoulder. “Well, ‘s jus’ a sacrifice you’s gonna hafta make, ain’t it?”

…

Bringing Daisy along dress shopping was, it turns out, an absolute stroke of genius on Medda’s part. She is so incredibly blunt about everything that the salesgirl – a mousy thing with a snub nose who looks at them as if they’ve trailed dog dirt into her store on their shoes – picks out that Katherine is pretty sure that she might be able to put this dressmaker’s out of business if she tried hard enough.

“Nah,” Daisy says wrinkling her nose as Katherine emerges from behind the elaborately embroidered screen in a high-necked, ruffle-covered gown, “you looks like you’s been in some terrible taffeta factory explosion.”

“You’re right.” Katherine snorts. “Jack _will_ hate this.” She admits, looking to Medda, who only nods in agreement.

“We have some more vintage styles, if you’d prefer?” The salesgirl asks, looking as if she’d quite like to spring across the room and strangle Daisy with the veil that she’s currently holding.

“Sure.” Katherine nods. “Sure, let’s try it.”

“I presume you’ll want a statement dress? Keep the attention on the gown, you know?” The girl asks, her gaze flicking to Katherine’s cheek.

“Why would she want to do that?” Medda snaps at the same time as Daisy says:

“You kiddin’? We wants all the attention on that pretty face.”

The salesgirl nods, looking like she doesn’t believe a word of it, and Katherine feels vaguely like she wants to cry. She tries to focus on the showroom, trying to imagine how she’d describe it if it was a scene in one of her stories. The chaise longue that Medda and Daisy are perched on is overstuffed to the point of discomfort, as if one wrong move would split the seams. Honestly, Katherine kind of knows how it feels, trapped in this monstrosity of puffy sleeves.

Daisy hops up, declaring that Katherine mustn’t spend another moment in that dress, and shoos her behind the dressing screen to begin unbuttoning the back.

“You ain’t got a photo o’ Jack, have you, buttercup?” She asks, undoing the buttons with the kind of precision that comes from years of quick changes in the theatre’s wings.

Katherine tilts her head to the side, partly to allow Daisy better access to the buttons, partly to consider. She _hasn’t_ ever seen a photo of Jack. It’s never really been a problem, she supposes, as Jack doesn’t exactly have the type of face you forget in a hurry; if she had his talent with a pencil, she could draw every laughter line, every scar, every pore out right here and now. So, no, she doesn’t have a photo of Jack, because she’s never really felt as if she’s needed one. Would Jack even have ever had his photograph taken? Surely he must have done – yes, when he got sentenced in the Refuge they must have taken a mug shot then. The fact that the only extant photo of Jack is probably of a bruised ten-year-old holding up a sheet with his name and inmate number on it makes her heart ache for him.

 _A little different from how you were raised?_ He’s never been more spot on than that. Her own portrait was taken when she was fifteen, a few months before Lucy died, the two of them together. That photograph is gone now, floating through the atmosphere in white flakes of ash. Katherine realises with a start that she doesn’t remember Lucy’s face. It’s there, sort of, floating just out of reach, but every time she reaches out to grasp it, it disintegrates, splitting into little flakes of white. There’s a vague sort of outline, high cheekbones, soft ringlets, but other than that… Katherine feels tears start to well in her eyes that have nothing to do with the salesgirl’s jibes and has to blink them away fiercely.

“No.” She manages to keep her voice level. “Why?”

“‘S a shame. I wanted to show that bitch the kinda guy you can get when you’s beautiful _and_ nice.”

And somehow, that’s just enough of a boost for Katherine to be able to look the salesgirl in the eye when she returns with an armful of dresses. Because hell, Jack is a _catch_. Handsomest guy in New York City, in her opinion (not that she’d ever tell him – he still needs to be able to fit that big head of his through the door). The first dress that the salesgirl puts her in from this new range, Katherine half falls in love with it before it’s even been buttoned up at the back.

The dress is of a rather 1850s style and therefore completely and utterly flouts all social convention. The salesgirl looks frankly disturbed by it, which somehow makes Katherine like it all the more. Yes, she thinks, looking at it in the mirror, her parents would _hate_ it. There’s less of the fullness in the skirt, a more modern cut, but the neckline is that of a mid-century evening gown, and therefore just on the chaster side of scandalous. Jack will love it, she knows instantly and without any semblance of doubt.

Medda nods approvingly when she emerges from behind the screen. Daisy, as always, is a little less tactful, and adds, admiringly: “Your tits look great.”

Katherine is shocked, she has to admit, by the cool crassness of it. But the look on the salesgirl’s face, clearly completely lost with this kind of clientele, is enough to make her burst out laughing. Daisy is _so_ much more fun than any of her high society friends.

“They do, rather, don’t they?” She laughs, just to watch as the salesgirl’s eyes bug out a little further from her skull. Having had her fun, Katherine turns in the mirror, examining it. “It’s a lot like my mother’s.”

It has less ruffles, sure, but it’s close. Her mother, Katherine knows, would have insisted on altering her own wedding dress to make the neckline more appropriate to the current fashions, if Katherine had asked to wear it. This way, she gets to wear something like what she and Lucy saw that day in front of the mirror all those years ago. Lucy would love it. Jack will love it. And really, who else is she trying to impress?

“I’ll take this one.” She nods, decisive. Medda’s smile is proud and almost wide enough to crack her face in two.

When they get back to the boarding house, Daisy invades Katherine’s room on the pretext of helping her to carry all of the clothing up the stairs. Katherine has never seen anybody dominate Miss Morton before, insisting that Katherine _needs assistance_ and that _nobody else will do,_ but it’s something she wouldn’t mind seeing again.

“Jack is goin’ to _die_ when he sees this.” Daisy says, sliding a clothes hanger delicately into the sleeves of the chemise that she and Medda had bullied Katherine into buying, despite her rather vehement protests that she has chemises already that would do just fine.

“I might die of embarrassment.” Katherine mutters, buttoning the dress into its cover ready to take it to be altered to fit her.

Daisy snorts, then, seeing Katherine’s confusion, speaks. “Sorry, love, I jus’… the way he talks about you? You ain’t got nothin’ to worry about.”

Katherine blinks. No, she supposes she doesn’t have anything to worry about. Jack’s the last person she needs to worry about straying – if he was in this for money or sex then he’d have been long gone by now. No, Jack’s in it for the long haul. And so is she.

“Hey, Daisy?” She asks, looking up.

“Mm-hm?”

“Would you like to be my bridesmaid?”

Daisy whips around, looking as if Katherine’s just hit her over the head with a mallet. “Seriously?”

“Yes.” Katherine shrugs. “You’ve been a better friend to me today than the girls I’ve known since school.”

“It’d be an honour.”

And so, really the only thing that’s left to do is to get the dress altered. However, as Katherine climbs the stairs to the Jacobs’ apartment, dress cover slung over one arm, she starts to wonder about her motivations behind all of this.

Because, yes, she does need her wedding dress altered to fit her. And, yes, she wants to give her custom (and, subsequently, money) to someone who deserves it. And, yes, Sarah is the obvious choice. But. This could be an olive branch, an offer of friendship to an intelligent girl who will be inextricably entwined in her life very soon, through Jack and David. Daisy has more than proved that, contrary to Katherine’s former position on the matter, girls can indeed make good friends. And Sarah is nice. But. (And there it is again, that pesky but.) She’s not quite sure that’s why she’s doing this. Katherine has a lingering, sinking feeling that she might be doing this to stake her claim over Jack, in some sort of messed up way.

Esther gives Katherine her usual warm welcome when she turns up on their doorstep, though she seems surprised when Katherine asks to speak to Sarah, something unreadable flitting across her features, something a little bit like guilt or nervousness. Still, Esther directs her to the end of the hall.

Steeling herself, Katherine knocks on the door. A few seconds later, it swings open, revealing a decidedly rumpled Sarah, her hair messy and circles like bruises under her eyes. “Miss Pulitzer?” She blinks.

“Sarah, hey.” Katherine forces a smile onto her face. Even like this, Sarah is prettier than her. She’s starting to understand what drove Dorian Gray quite so mad. “I need to ask a favour.”

Sarah frowns, but opens the door a little wider. It’s as close to a welcome as Katherine’s going to get, so she takes it, stepping inside and holding up the dress, strangely nervous.

“I’ve bought a wedding dress, but it needs taking in. I am useless with a needle, so I was hoping –“

“That I’d alter it for you?”

“Yes.” Katherine nods, slightly more enthusiastic than she probably should be. “Yes, please. I’ll pay you, of course, I don’t mind about that, I just-”

“Sure.” Sarah nods toward the dress cover. “That it?”

“Yes.” Katherine holds it out.

Sarah unbuttons the cloth cover. Her movements are practiced, but mechanical somehow, like some puppeteer is pulling strings to make her fingers move. She nods, a jerky motion. “It’s pretty.” She glances over at Katherine. “Thought you’d go for somethin’ more high fashion though.”

Katherine smiles, attempting brightness. “I thought Jack would like this better.”

“Stick it on and I’ll pin it.”

It’s odd, somehow, undressing in somewhere so wholly not home. It reminds Katherine unpleasantly of those first few days in the Hotel Netherland, where everything felt vaguely off-kilter. It’s not that she’s unused to dressing in front of someone, a maid was a permanent fixture in her morning and evening routines for much of her life, but this is different somehow. There’s a vulnerability to it, stripping down in Sarah’s room, shedding the layers that keep her safe, exposing skin not nearly so pretty as she imagines Sarah’s to be. It’s a relief when Sarah fixes the final few buttons and she is covered again.

A relief, until Sarah stabs her with a pin.

“Ah!”

“Sorry.” Sarah says, speaking around the multitude of other pins that she’s holding between her teeth. She doesn’t even look up. “You need to hold still though.” _I wasn’t even moving._

Once all the pins are in, Sarah stands back to admire her handiwork. “You found a house yet?” She asks.

“Jack put an offer in on one last week that got accepted.” Katherine replies, stepping out of the dress very carefully so as not to be turned further into a pincushion. “He’s waiting to hear back about the sale going through, but we’re hopeful.”

“It nice?”

“It needs a lot of work, but it could be.”

“Well,” Sarah laughs quietly, “it’s hardly going to be like you’re used to.”

“I know.” Katherine laughs too, fastening her skirt at her waist. “Such a relief!”

“You think you’re goin’ to be happy there?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I know you like Jack, but… leavin’ behind all that luxury? Can’t be easy.”

Katherine smarts at word _like_. She tries her best to grit her teeth and give Sarah the benefit of the doubt, but _like_? It sounds so flippant. As if Jack’s just some new toy she’s picked up and will throw away as soon as she gets bored.

“It’s not.” Katherine confirms, then, never more sure of anything in her entire life: “It’s worth it though.”

...

Sleep has always been something that came easily to Sarah. Long hours split between the factory and needlework tend to do that to you. But tonight, she can’t sleep. Even in the darkness, the white dress is visible, glowing slightly in the tiniest bit of light that filters through the thin curtains. Hung on her wardrobe, as it is, it floats just above the floor, ghostly or angelic by turns, depending on where she looks at it from.

If she was another woman, in another life, she would indulge herself and tear it down from its hanger only to hack at it with scissors. But she can’t do that. She doesn’t have the money or the strength to do something so impetuous. Still, she rises, takes it down from the hanger, examines it, running the soft material through work-hardened fingers. Strips off her nightgown, pulls it on. It doesn’t fit her properly even with the way she’s taken it in. Katherine has more flesh on her body, curves in places that Sarah doesn’t, the benefit of a childhood where food was plentiful. She wonders whether that’s something that Jack likes about his wife-to-be, the roundness of her breasts, the flare of her hips, or whether he just overlooks it. Whether he prefers something a little more streamlined, more straightforward.

Either way, Katherine will look like the princess she was brought up to be. And Sarah? Well, if she even gets invited to the wedding, she will stand there in the same dress she’s worn to synagogue for the past four years, keeping her coat on to cover how short the sleeves have become, and she will watch. Quiet, how she’s always supposed to be.


	37. Chapter 37

“So. Who’s on your list?” Katherine asks, stretched out Jack’s ancient sofa, notebook and pencil in hand.

“Jus’ the boys, I guess.” Jack shrugs.

Sometimes, when he gets like this, it’s hard to break into his world. Katherine wonders what it’s like, sometimes, inside his head, the way that he sees everything in planes of colour and light and shape. He’s working on a commission of the Hudson River at sunset for some big banking firm to hang in their offices – recommended for the job by Bill, after he’d seen Jack’s work hanging in the Pulitzer’s dining room. Katherine had been unsure about Jack taking it on, honestly, but they’re paying him a hundred dollars for it, and he’s promised that just as soon as they’ve got the house sorted he’ll cut back. The mortgage got approved yesterday; there’s only the actual transaction to go through now, so it won’t be long. Plus, he’s cut back his overtime hours at work, at least, after much nagging by herself and Medda, so she can’t really complain.

She thinks about the tickets that are heavy in the pocket of her skirt and swallows down her excited reveal. They’re a treat for when the house is bought, after all, because goodness knows Jack won’t spend any money on himself at the moment. Instead, she returns to the paper before her.

“Names, Jack, names.” She says, bouncing her pencil against the moleskine cover of the notebook.

Jack lays his paintbrush down and wanders over to her, nudging her knee to force her to make room for him on the sofa. “Uh, Davey, obviously-“

“And the rest of the Jacobs?” She tucks her knees up, obliging, and Jack slumps down beside her.

“Yeah, so, Esther, Sarah, Les, Mayer. An’ then the newsies. So.” Jack clears his throat, stretching out his fingers to count off the newsies. “Crutchie, Racer, Elmer, Mush, Albert, Specs, Henry, Finch, Sniper, Tommy Boy, Jo Jo, Buttons, Romeo, Splasher, Mike, Ike, Smalls. None o’ the little ones, they’s too young an’ I wants the lads to enjoy themselves, not be babysittin’, y’know?”

“Of course.” Katherine nods, thanking her lucky stars for that shorthand course she’d taken two summers ago. “That’s… twenty-two. And then Medda, obviously. I’ve got Edith, Ralph, Bill, and Daisy.”

“What ‘bout your other friends? Elizabeth an’… is it Rose?”

Katherine scrunches her nose. “I suppose I ought to invite them.”

“Don’ get too excited now.” Jack grins.

“It’s lucky we’re only going for a meal, rather than a proper reception. Can you imagine if one of the newsies asked one of them to dance?”

Jack laughs at that, but privately Katherine is glad that they’ve chosen this. They’ve agreed on it, a meal rather than renting a hotel ballroom. It’s not really like they even have enough people attending to warrant a ballroom, honestly. Katherine had thought, when they’d walked into Luigi’s and asked to book themselves in for a quiet meal after the service, that she’d be disappointed. As a little girl, when she imagined weddings, she’d thought about ballrooms and buffet spreads, not less than forty people huddled around a few tables in a tiny Italian restaurant. The funny thing is, she’s not. It feels right, somehow, apt. What’s the use in wasting money on the wedding? It’s the marriage that’s important, not the wedding.

She was more disappointed when it came to the honeymoon, she’ll admit. But that truly is a waste of money, as much as she wants to take Jack to Santa Fe, or, if she’d had the actual dowry she was supposed to have, take him to Europe and visit all the French and Italian art galleries she remembers from teenaged trips abroad with her mother and governesses.

At night, before she goes to sleep, she sometimes lies in bed and imagines what Jack’s face would look like if she took him to the Louvre. The way that his eyes would widen, glint, the way that he’d drag her around, pointing at brushstrokes, asking questions in a voice he could barely keep hushed from excitement.

That, however, is out of the question for the time being. They’ve barely even both managed to get the week after the wedding off work, never mind scrape together enough for a cross-country trip. No, their honeymoon, if you can call it that, will be spent in the little house they’ve renovated together, just the two of them.

Jack feels guilty about it, she knows, scratching at the back of his neck and apologising every time the honeymoon is so much as mentioned. So, she stays quiet. They have the rest of their lives together, after all, to visit Santa Fe or to wander around art galleries. And really, it doesn’t matter where they are, so long as they’re together.

“Who’d have thought you’d have more family on your side of the church than me, huh?” Katherine jokes, trying to keep her voice light. By the look Jack gives her, she knows that he sees right through it. Maybe she’d wanted him to. She isn’t quite sure.

“Let’s not do that.” Jack frowns, taking hold of her left foot with gentle, paint-stained fingers and tugging it into his lap. “The split church thing.”

“What do you mean?” Katherine asks, determinedly ignoring the feather-light patterns Jack is tracing onto her ankle through the silk of her stocking and peering over the top of her notebook at him. She isn’t going to lose her head over him touching her ankle, of all things.

“Let people sit where they likes. They’s all family.” He shrugs, then chuckles to himself. “The newsies like you better’n me half the time anyway.”

Katherine laughs too. It’s reached a point now where, when they walk into the lodgehouse, they get equally accosted by newsies. The younger ones seem to gravitate towards Katherine – perhaps because Jack, with his height and strength and charisma, is too intimidating. Honestly, if anybody feels intimidated, it’s Katherine. She likes children, but they can be difficult to handle. Whatever kind of maternal feeling these little lost boys are seeking, she doesn’t think it’s within her power to provide, but she’ll try, still. Because Jack loves them. And that means that she loves them too.

It's not quite enough, though, to fully dismiss her melancholy feelings. The church will feel empty without her parents, her other siblings. Young Joseph and Herbert are too much under her Father’s thumb to defy him, she knows, and Constance is in France still. Even just imagining it without their ranks filling up the pew, without her Father’s arm hooked through hers as they walk down the aisle, it feels wrong. It feels wrong in the same way that schools empty of children feel wrong, haunted by _ought-to-be_ s.

“I really wish my parents were going to be there.”

Jack’s eyes flick up to meet hers, dark and full of fire. “Y’know, I’s still happy to march over to the World an’-“

“It’s not worth it.” She sighs. If she lets him finish that sentence, she just might agree to it. “I want them to be there because they care about me, not because you care about me enough to threaten them.”

And it’s true. Relationships go two ways, so it’s not worth it. With her and Jack, there’s give and take – the same with the newsies, with Medda, with the Jacobs. But her Father? Her family? They just take and take and take, until she’s drained dry, shrivelled up on the floor. She doesn’t have any more of herself to give. And to be perfectly honest, she doesn’t want to.

Still, she can’t help but hope that there’s somebody there behind the father that she sees now, somebody that she recognises behind the mask. Katherine doesn’t want perfect, goodness knows none of the Pulitzers have ever been that. But… better. Better could be good. Better was what he used to be when Lucy, his favourite – and she’d always known that much, Lucy always had been, always will be, had been around. He’d had time, then, if only a little, to consider the possibility that he might not be right all the time. He’s out of time, now.

Katherine swallows. It’s loud, in the silence of the flat, Jack’s fingers noiseless as they trace patterns on her skin through her stockings, goosebumps rising along her arms at the feeling. He looks over, studies her, the way she sets her jaw as she swallows, the graceful curve of her neck. Jack doesn’t know how he got so lucky.

“Reverend Bates told me on Sunday that he will still officiate the wedding, but it’s not going to be put into the parish newsletter or announced at service.” Katherine tells him, her voice tight. It damn near breaks Jack’s heart. “Apparently, my father made a rather large donation to make sure of that.”

It’s his turn to swallow, her turn to try to ignore the way that his Adam’s apple bobs in his throat. His fingers still, tighten just a fraction around her ankle, not enough to hurt, but enough to stop her from moving, from leaving, tendons and muscles in his forearms tensing. “Is you-“

“Jack Kelly,” Katherine levels a look at him, “if you ask me one more time whether I’m sure about marrying you, I swear I won’t kiss you for a week.”

Jack raises his hands in mock surrender, but the tension is gone from his arms. “Shuttin’ up.”

And she’s glad of course, but she just wants to feel his fingers brushing against her again. He looks thoughtful though, for a moment, staring at the little clock on the mantelpiece, its hands frozen permanently at five past six, the glass cracked – a remnant of two of the newsies brawling on Jack’s hearth rug, no doubt. She wants to ask him, feels the curiosity burn inside her stomach, but she squashes it down. He’ll tell her when he’s ready. And if he doesn’t, well, then it’s none of her business, is it?

Katherine’s pleased with her silence thirty seconds later, when Jack asks, quietly: “Can I invite the boys from work? Ernest won’t come, I bets, but I’d like to ask ‘em all jus’ the same.”

“You don’t need to ask, Jack.” She says, nudging him with her foot. He gets the message, returning his fingers to where they’ve been as she returns her pencil to the page. “So, that’s Ernest, Walter, and Daniel, right?”

“Yeah.”

The list finished, she flips the notebook closed and lets it drop onto the floor. Katherine sits up properly, her feet still in his lap, and shoots him a smile. “I’m really excited to marry you.”

Jack grins back. “I’s real excited to marry you too.”

…

The tickets that are burning a hole in Katherine’s pocket finally come to fruition two weeks later.

“Ace, you know I hates surprises.” Jack grumbles.

He grumbles loudly, Katherine would hasten to add, as he’s in his bedroom and she can hear him from his living room, where she is perched on the couch in her best skirt and blouse combination.

“You’re going to love this one, I promise.” She calls back, suppressing an eye roll. Jack only grunts in response, though she’s ninety-nine percent sure that there is no actual irritation behind it.

“Okay.” Jack emerges from his bedroom, fiddling with the cuffs of his shirt. “‘M dressed up fancy. Now can we go?”

Katherine arches a brow. “You still need a tie, mister.”

“‘S a weekend, Ace.” He groans, reaching in her general direction as she brushes past him to go and fetch it, his head lolling back. She easily evades his grasp, heading over to the little wardrobe in his room and grabbing hold of the dark red tie that is haphazardly slung over the clothes rail inside. “Who wears a tie on a weekend?”

“You do, now.” She replies, having absolutely none of it. Honestly, sometimes it’s like wrangling a toddler.

He stays still, at least, despite his protestations, while she drapes it around his neck and ties it for him. Jack is perfectly capable of tying his own necktie, she knows, but honestly she isn’t sure that he wouldn’t just hold it out of her reach until she agreed to let him go without it, so she isn’t taking any chances. Besides, she likes doing this for him, likes taking care of him in this little way. It feels domestic, but also romantic, in a strange sort of way, standing close enough that she can feel his warm, minty breath fanning across her face and see the slight sheen where his aftershave isn’t quite dry yet.

When she’s done, turning his collar down over the tie and straightening him up, she glances up at him. And oh, that’s a mistake. Because he’s looking at her with this kind of warm fondness, and it should definitely, definitely be illegal for any man to have eyes as pretty as his. Jack ducks his head to kiss her, snaking his one arm around her waist whilst the other hand comes up to fiddle with the hairpin that’s holding her hair in its updo, his fingers teasing at it, promising something, something undoubtedly delicious, should she let him ease it out and let her hair pool around her shoulders. But, they have somewhere to be.

“Come on.” She breaks away. “We’ll be late.”

“Late for what?” He grouches, but crosses to the door anyway, holding it open for her.

“Nuh-uh.” She smiles up at him. “It’s a surprise.”

Surprised is one word for Jack’s expression as they wander up the front lawn of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, approaching the great three-arched façade.

Katherine knows that her father was unsure about this particular gallery when it opened, a few years before her birth. It’s certainly not one she was ever allowed to go to as a child, but as it’s become more and more popular within society circles, he has had to rethink his stance on it. Still, he’s never been, she knows; by the time he had come around to the idea of this very modern gallery, rather than the more traditional ones, his sight had been too poor for him to appreciate it. Although she knows, of course, that there is a good likelihood of there being at least one person that she knows here, with it being a rather major collection opening, she is, at least, comfortable with the notion that this is a space untainted by her father’s influence. He may have eyes here, as he does in every corner of the city, but he has never set foot in this particular building. They’re breaking new ground, here. Her and Jack. Starting over. Starting anew.

“Wha-“ Jack turns to her, after he’s read the plaque beside the doors.

Katherine smiles, reaching into her pocket and producing the tickets. “The Henry Marquand collection has some newly arrived paintings. I got us tickets to celebrate buying the house.”

Jack has never felt more blown away by anybody in his entire life. “Has I told you I love you today?”

“You have.” Katherine smiles, lifting her chin. “I wouldn’t object to hearing it again though.”

“I love you.” He squeezes the arm that he has wrapped around her waist, tucking her into his side.

“I love you too. Shall we go in?”

Jack nods so excitedly that Katherine is quite surprised that his head doesn’t roll off his shoulders entirely. Handing the tickets to the doorman, smart in a red and gold uniform, they are waved in. Jack whistles under his breath as they step inside, his eyes darting around the beautiful entrance hall, all arches and columns and fountains. Katherine squeezes his hand, now clasped around hers, and leans into him just a little. He’s as pleased as she’d hoped he would be. Jack Kelly, lost for words. Now that’s something that you don’t hear every day.

They wander around for almost an hour, Jack pulling her from painting to painting, his excitement refusing to wane. When they get to the Marquand collection, though, Jack is a little perplexed as to why they’re being hailed as such masterpieces.

“None o’ ‘em look very happy.” He frowns.

And, well, Katherine can’t say that he’s wrong, following his line of sight to a portrait of a stern woman in a frilly lace cap. She’s wearing what can only be described as Puritanical garb, all black and white and buttoned up to the ears. Considering that the plaque beneath the painting announces that it was painted in Holland in 1634, the resemblance to Miss Morton is startling. Katherine indulges herself for a moment, wonders whether Miss Morton is actually a time traveller, or if she’s actually just more ancient than she’s before anticipated.

“It’s supposed to be a record of what a person looks like, my love,” she teases, squeezing his hand where his fingers are intertwined with hers, “not just be of them grinning.”

“Well, yeah,” Jack scrunches his nose, swiping at it with the back of his free hand, “but… these folks, they’s so… still.”

“Jack,” she lowers her voice, as if she’s telling him a secret, “I hate to break it to you, but they’re not real. They’re just paintings.”

“Sod off!” He laughs, nudging her with his shoulder.

His laugh is too loud for the room, echoes off the high ceilings and bounces around the gallery, drawing stares from the whispering visitors. Katherine can’t bring herself to care. She was one of them, once, but isn’t this what art is supposed to be? The joy that she sees in Jack’s face when she makes him laugh, the way that his careworn expression drops away and he looks so young, alight with life.

“I _means_ ,” he tells her, somewhere between fond and exasperated, “there’s no expression. ‘S emotionless, like. I knows what this person _looks_ like, but I don’ know what they _were_ like. Y’know?”

Slowly, Katherine nods. She does know, sort of. It’s not something that she would have noticed on her own, she must admit. Her governess had tried so very hard with her artistic education, but though she can list off the Old Masters (alphabetically by last name or categorised by their subject matter), she’s never had much of an eye for art. Honestly, the art galleries she’d been dragged around in France and Italy through her teenage years had bored her to tears. She doesn’t think she’d mind so much, wandering around them with Jack, though. He helps her to see things she wouldn’t have otherwise.

“See, this one.” Jack says, tugging her along with him to look at a different portrait, his attention span, unfortunately, being one of golden retriever puppy. The one he takes her to, however, is not an enormous oil painting, but instead a pencil sketch in a small, unassuming glass case. “Look a’ this. Beautiful, that is, see the shadin’ there? Looks like she’s alive.”

He points, his finger hovering just above the glass, not wanting to leave a streak of dirt across it. Jack peers in, his eyes tracing every line, every little detail. The plaque underneath says that it is a preliminary sketch for an oil painting which the museum is hoping to soon purchase for the collection. Jack wonders why they’d want the painting, when they have this sketch, the light in the model’s eyes shining off the page.

Katherine cuts into his reverie, leaning up and pressing a kiss to his cheek. Jack turns, smiling and puzzled.

“‘S that for?”

She looks up at him, feeling almost unbearably fond. “I miss your smile, sometimes, that’s all.”

“You’s gonna be sick of it soon.” Jack chuckles, reaching up to tuck a stray curl behind her ear. Katherine tries very hard to remember to keep breathing as his fingertips brush her skin. “You’s gonna hafta look at my dopey grin every day for the rest o’ your life.”

“It sounds like a hardship,” she deadpans, “but I’m sure I’ll manage it.”

Katherine’s weighing up in her head whether she’ll be able to sneak a completely inappropriate proper kiss from him as the other visitors wander around, perusing the collection, when she hears her name being called.

“D’ya know ruddy everyone?” Jack mutters, not unkindly, shooting a glance over her left shoulder to see who is now preparing to accost them.

“Shush, you.” She giggles, turning to face whoever it is now. “Rose, Dr. Graceton.”

Rose is bright-eyed as she hurries over. Rose, Katherine reflects, is one of those unfortunate persons who tries her very best to be tactful, but wears her heart completely on her sleeve. Dr. Graceton, by contrast, remains thoroughly unreadable throughout every conversation. His face is a carefully schooled picture of neutrality as his wife drags him over toward them.

“I was going to call on you tomorrow, but we’re having a little dinner party on the eighteenth and you simply must attend.”

“That sounds delightful.” Katherine smiles. Jack is endlessly surprised by her ability to lie through her teeth.

Rose nods enthusiastically, silence falling over the group, oppressive and stifling. Katherine coughs. Finally, after an interminable silence, Rose continues, looking decidedly less enthusiastic and more like she is performing an act of enormous graciousness and generosity.

“And Mr. Kelly would be most welcome too, of course.”

Jack nods, the movement tight and jerky. “Thank you.”

“That’s settled; we shall both be there.” Katherine smiles, before excusing them both and pulling Jack away to try and regain some semblance of control over the evening.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Henry Marquand collection welcomed new paintings to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the May and June of 1900. The collection was primarily of Old Masters, featuring art by the likes of Bartholomeus Van Der Helst. That’s what I call commitment to historical accuracy, folks. Also, have fluff *throws some glitter in the air*. 
> 
> Apologies, also, for the daily chapters - I update as soon as I have the following two chapters in the Word document fully edited and ready to go and I've been on a massive editing binge recently.


	38. Chapter 38

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My writing here is terrible, but Jack and Katherine are cute, so I hope that makes up for it. Comments, as always, make me very happy.

“Water! From the ceiling – there is water pourin’ through the ceiling-“

That, Katherine realises, upon walking through the door, is David’s voice. And if David is shouting about water pouring through the ceiling, that something is deeply, deeply wrong. She considers her options, the unholy amount of food in her hands, and the current situation. Debates about turning right back around and walking out of the door, leaving the food in the corridor for the boys to find. She’s not going to take that – she couldn’t eat it all if she tried over the course of a month, and besides, it’s their pay.

The newsies, at least the older ones who can spare the hours, have been turning up at the house every weekend to help Jack install electric wires and repair floorboards. Jack, of course, had gathered them together at the end of the first day and tried to pay them all – not much, mind, because they haven’t got much to give, but he’d tried – only to have a veritable riot on his hands. All of the newsies have refused, despite spending hours working on the house, to take so much as a penny. Therefore, Katherine has found a solution and provides, courtesy of the sandwich shop down the street, meals for whoever turns up that day to help out.

Setting down the basket filled to the brim with sandwiches wrapped in newspaper, she takes off her heels. Jack is speaking now, she can hear his voice coming from the kitchen, a low rumble that somehow manages to soothe whatever nerves have been blooming in her stomach.

“Relax, Dave, jus’ hand me that bucket – hey, Race, I ain’t no expert but I’s pretty sure the sink shouldn’t empty into the kitchen-“

“Less water wastage?” Comes Race’s voice from upstairs.

“I’ll waste you ‘f you don’ fix it!” Jack calls back, emerging from the kitchen into the hallway just as she’s picking the basket back up. When he sees her, his face lights up, a grin cracking across his face from ear to ear. There’s something proud and excited and affectionate that bursts in Katherine’s stomach at the sight of it. Still, he doesn’t have time to stop, squeezing past her in the narrow hallway with a brush of his chapped lips against her cheek, throwing her a greeting as he sprints up the stairs. “Hey, Kath, jus’ gimme two ticks.”

Amused, Katherine pads through to the kitchen in stocking feet. And, well, Davey wasn’t entirely wrong about the water. There’s no plaster ceiling in the kitchen, just beams supporting the floorboards above, and though the water appears to have stopped, drips are still slipping through the cracks between the floorboards and splashing into the half-full bucket that is sat on a rather damp kitchen table. Davey, who is huddled in the corner, staring dolefully at the bucket, looks up at her and sighs.

“If we manage to renovate this house without me havin’ a heart attack, it’ll be a miracle.”

Katherine laughs, setting the basket down on the sideboard and tossing a sandwich over to Davey, who fumbles to catch it. Above them, she hears the rumble of Jack’s voice, low and pleasant, one she’d know anywhere.

“Well that’s what happens when you don’ seal the pipe-“

“How was I s’posed to know that?” Race whines.

There’s a quiet _smack_ sound, somebody cuffing Race upside the head, no doubt, before a troop of them clatter down the stairs, Jack and Race first, closely followed by Henry, Mush, and Albert. Katherine gestures to the basket as they enter. “I brought dinner.”

“Thanks, Princess.” Race grins, the boys, with the exception of Jack, falling on the food like animals.

Jack, however, crosses the room to her, where she’s backed up against the sideboard, and lowers his head to kiss her properly, even if it is disappointingly chaste and short. All too soon for Katherine’s liking, he pulls away, snatching up a rag from the sideboard behind her and throwing her a wink as he turns to mop up the worst of the water that’s gathered on the surface of the wooden table.

“Where are we up to?” Katherine asks, watching as he empties the bucket down the sink and begins wiping up the excess water.

“Well,” Jack says, as he wipes up the worst of it, “we’s got a flushin’ toilet-“

“Which I christened!” Mush pipes up, around a mouthful of sandwich.

“Wi’out permission.” Jack scowls, lobbing the wet, balled-up rag at the boy’s head. Mush, however, ducks, and the rag hits the wall with a splat only to slither to the floor, leaving a greyish circle on the peeling paint. “An’ once I’s sealed the pipe then the sink should be sorted an’ all.” He turns back to Katherine, grimacing in apology. “We’s livin’ a house wi’ runnin’ hot an’ cold water, Kath. ‘S fancy.”

“Really fancy.” Katherine nods, a smile quirking at the corners of her mouth.

It pleases her, that Jack can tentatively joke about these things with her now. Sure, he actually does live in a world where hot and cold running water are a luxury, but that’s okay. They can find the humour in it together, now.

“Electric’s done, too.” Race comments, hefting himself up to sit on the sideboard next to Katherine.

“That’s great!” She exclaims, her eyes returning, as they always do, to Jack. “Is it just painting and cleaning, then?”

“Well,” Jack huffs, pulling off his cap and running his hand through curls stiffened by the sweat and dirt of the working day, “I’s gotta replaster the ceilin’ in the bedroom now’s we’s insulated the eaves, but downstairs, yeah. An’ floors, we’s gotta do floors.”

“Davey and I will get started on the living room, then, shall we?” She smiles, bright and excited to get stuck in.

“Yes.” Davey cries. “Yes, please, I would like to be with Kath and away from all unsealed pipes.”

Jack rolls his eyes at David, but doesn’t protest, instead turning back to Katherine. “I’s left those old paintin’ clothes you asked for in the little bedroom, sweetheart, but they ain’t goin’ to fit you.”

She smiles, pressing a kiss to his cheek as she sets off upstairs. “I’ll make it work.”

Jack is right. His old painting clothes definitely do not fit her. She’s brought a belt, though, which she’s hoping will fix the worst of it. None of her dresses exactly seem conducive to painting. Jack’s trousers need rolling up five times before the hems stop trailing along the floor, and his shirt almost reaches her knees, but the belt stops the trousers from falling down and she ties her hair up in a scarf to keep it out the way. David still tells her she looks ridiculous when she emerges, but that’s fine. Looking pretty whilst painting is something that she’s certain, from experience, only Jack can manage.

It takes five coats of white washing to cover up the soot stains on the living room chimney breast, and even more than that to erase the yellowing patches of nicotine smoke from the ceiling, but they manage it, her and Davey. The sounds of the boys working upstairs are nothing short of ominous, but upstairs is Jack’s problem and he isn’t letting her within five feet of the staircase to the master bedroom, so she’s content to leave it. Whatever he’s got planned, she’s sure that she will love it.

Katherine likes Davey’s company, glad that she has somebody who will talk to her about the importance of education legislation with any degree of insight (Jack tries, bless his heart, but she knows that he’s only humouring her with it). She’s also glad that she has somebody to hold the chair steady as she stands on it to paint the ceiling. He is, however, noticeably absent, scurrying around in search of a rag to wipe up the paint he’s managed to drip onto the skirting board, when Katherine hears someone wolf-whistle directly behind her and falls off said chair.

“Woah!” _Jack. It’s always bloody Jack._ Still, she can’t be too annoyed at him, as though he is the cause of her potential injury, he is also who saves her from it.

A few months of office work haven’t dimmed reflexes honed for eighteen years and he leaps forward, catching her with easy strength and setting her down gently.

“Careful, sweetheart.” Jack says, steadying her on the ground, and shaking his hand to flick off the paint she’d smeared across his forearm mid-fall. “Don’ want you limpin’ down the aisle.”

“I wouldn’t be if you hadn’t made me jump!” Katherine scowls. Then, deciding that it’s a perfectly suitable punishment, she taps the tip of his nose with her paintbrush, leaving a white blob there. Jack goes momentarily cross-eyed to see her handiwork, before returning his gaze to her and grinning.

“Jus’ admirin’ the view.”

 _Cheeky boy._ She rolls her eyes. “Why am I marrying such a monstrous flirt?”

“I dunno, Ace.” Jack grins, ruffling his hair with one hand. “Is it ‘cos I’s real handsome, or ‘cos o’ my artistic talent, or ‘cos-“

“It’s because I’m an idiot, it’s been decided.” She interrupts, laughing, even as he growls playfully and catches her by the waist, pressing kisses to her jawline and nuzzling into her skin, leaving white streaks across her face from the paint on his nose despite her trying, in vain, to push his head away.

“You two are disgustin’.” Davey remarks from the doorway as he returns with the rag.

Katherine pulls away from Jack a little and though he lets her, he keeps his eyes and hands on her. “‘S six-thirty. You needs to be gettin’ back ‘f you don’t want another talkin’-to by that handler o’ yours.”

“She’s not my handler;” Katherine grimaces, “but thank you for the warning. I’ll see you on Friday, for the dinner?”

“As if I’d miss seein’ you.”

…

Their house won’t have a dining room, Katherine supposes, as she walks into the one in the Graceton’s townhouse on Friday evening, her arm hooked through Jack’s so tightly she’s pretty sure that she’s cutting off all blood circulation to his hand. That’s okay though, because it’s comforting her, and his left one is the one that he draws with – he can afford to lose this one. No, their house doesn’t have a dining room. Jack has, however, done the rounds of the flea markets and managed to find a nice little oak table with four chairs that fits perfectly in their kitchen. Admittedly, one of the four legs is two inches shorter than the others, lending it a rather concerning slant that has lost them more than one plate already, despite them not yet having moved in. But Jack’s said he’ll fix it. She didn’t go into this thinking that it would be easy. She’s going into this knowing that it will be worth it. That said, she’s not entirely sure that this dinner will be.

Rose has advertised it to her as a ‘small affair’, which definitely means at least one person that she can’t stand is going to be here. Lo and behold, she’s right. The table is set for eight. The Gracetons, herself and Jack, Eliza and Mr. Vanderbilt, and, speak of the devil, Cornelia and Darcy. Katherine suppresses the urge to spin them both around and march straight back out of the door. One dinner. She can do this. She’s got Jack with her, they can totally do this.

Jack’s thoughts are rather less positive. Honestly, he’d been entering into this whole thing with the attitude of ‘it can’t be worse than the dinner at the Pulitzer’s’ and yet it somehow is, because he’s not even got Ralph and Constance to sit next to now. And they’ve only gone and told him to sit in a seat that isn’t next to Katherine’s. Indeed, he’s diagonally away from her, across the table, which feels, frankly, about a million miles away. As it is, he’s sandwiched between Eliza and Cornelia, and sat opposite Darcy, of all people. He hasn’t spoken to Darcy since the Christmas party, of course, and though the two of them have never exchanged a cross word, he’s pretty sure that the whole _trying to get Katherine to leave him_ thing is a bit of a hurdle for any potential friendship.

But Katherine’s told him to be on his best behaviour ( _When ain’t I? Literally all the time, Jack._ ), so he’s going to damn well try. He tells Rose, who is seated on Darcy’s right, that he thinks that the soup is very nice. (He doesn’t – it’s cold, for some unknown reason, and grey, and has a poached egg lurking at the bottom, the purpose of which he cannot fathom.) That makes her smile and she asks him whether he’s had much Italian food before. Jack tells her about the time that he and Katherine went to Luigi’s and her article had been framed inside the menu, because no, he knows absolutely sod all about Italian food, but he could talk about how fantastic his future wife is for hours.

Katherine blushes at the praise, wondering when exactly Jack got so good at socialising. He’s always been charming, of course, charismatic, but he seems to have brought the women at the table, at least, completely under his spell. It’s a sight to behold. And, honestly? It’s kind of irritating. Because these are three women who have implied all sorts of things about Jack, few of them nice, and here they are hanging off his every word and following his easy movement and eager, still slightly paint-stained hands, with their eyes. She knows that Jack’s attractive – hell, she knows that all too well – but they’re looking at him in a way that seems entirely inappropriate considering that she’s _right here_ and all of them are either engaged or already married. The spell breaks, however, when Jack makes a passing comment about their wedding, shooting her a smile across the table – not the smile he’s plastered on for the present company, but a proper, Jack Kelly grin that’s completely hers.

“Oh, yes.” She cuts in. “We aren’t doing paper invitations, just because it’s a small thing, but we’d really love it if you all could come.”

The wedding’s size has absolutely nothing to do with it. Jack saw the price of paper invitations and balked, and half the newsies can’t read well enough to appreciate them anyway, so they’ve forgone tradition altogether. It’s not like they don’t forego tradition in most other aspects of their lives. That, however, is the least of Katherine’s worries. Because as soon as she mentions the wedding, the conversation dries up altogether, the only sound the awkward clinking of silverware on china.

“It’s the, uh, twenty-sixth, isn’t it, Katherine, dear?” Rose chimes in, her focus entirely on the piece of salmon on her plate.

“Yes.”

“I’m afraid we have a… prior engagement, don’t we, Roger?” Rose’s gaze doesn’t leave the fillet of salmon as she pokes it with her fork, sending a shower of its breadcrumb coating spilling onto the plate. She frowns down at it in distaste. Jack can’t imagine why – it’s bloody good food, this, and he doesn’t even _like_ fish-

“Yes, we do.” Dr. Graceton replies, as impassive as ever. “Terribly sorry to miss it.”

“We also have something on that day, don’t we?” Eliza asks, her eyes flitting to Mr. Vanderbilt, who responds with a curt nod.

“Oh, well,” Katherine shrugs, taken aback but still attempting to inject some lightness into her tone, “I’ll just have to have you round for tea and show you the photos then, won’t I?” There’s a murmur of assent.

“Darcy and I have spoken about it,” Cornelia simpers, “and we just don’t think it would be entirely appropriate for us to attend. Isn’t that right, Darcy?”

Katherine’s eyes fly to Darcy, her body awash with cold humiliation. He meets her gaze, holds it, just for a second, then looks away. That feels like more of a rejection that when he confirms it with his words.

“It is.”

 _So. A shunning. This is how it’s to be, is it?_ “Appropriate?” Katherine bites out.

Finally, finally, Rose looks up from her plate, biting her lip and shifting in her seat. Katherine glares at the other woman. _I dare you._ They’ve spent years accounting for Cornelia’s little insults, all because it’s what they’re all thinking, deep down. But this? This is too far, even for them. _How is Rose going to fix this one?_ _How is she going to save her polite little dinner party?_ _You should have known better, Rose,_ Katherine thinks, _if you wanted it to be polite, then you shouldn’t have invited the reporter and union leader, penniless, disowned. Because, of course, it’s always them who cause the problems, it couldn’t possibly be anybody else._

“I think what Cornelia means to say-“ Rose hedges.

“I’m sure Cornelia can explain what she means herself, Rose.” Katherine says, her voice tight. “Thank you.”

Cornelia frowns, finally, finally, discomfited. “Your own parents aren’t attending, Katherine. That will be reflected in the calibre of guests, their manners, I mean, and we just think-“

“Excuse me,” Katherine jolts to her feet, staring down at the salt and pepper pots that are sat on the table before her, already, even as inanimate objects, a more acceptable couple than she and Jack will ever be, “I am feeling rather unwell.”

With that, she scrunches the heavy linen napkin in her hands and places it on her half-finished plate. The material sucks greedily at the reddish sauce that the salmon sits in, its colour rising up, being pulled upwards through the threads of the material. Katherine walks out. Nobody says a word. They all look down at their plates. Jack hopes that it’s in shame.

“I should, uh, go check on her. Thank you for dinner.” He says, rising to his feet, the napkin sliding off his own lap and onto the floor. He doesn’t bother to pick it up.

But as he’s walking toward the door, he’s rather inclined to give these people a piece of his mind, seeing as he can’t do it to Pulitzer, so before he gets there, he turns around and, just loud enough for them to hear, not bothering to raise his voice, says: “Considerin’ how much you care about the manners of the people you’s associatin’ with, you really oughta work on your own.”

“I hate them!” Katherine cries out at the empty street, as Jack emerges from the front door, hurrying after her. “I hate them all!”

So, Jack doesn’t know which fork to use for which course at dinner. So, the newsies make stupid jokes and swear too much. So, if they don’t work, they don’t eat. So, what?

She’s now unworthy, apparently. Tainted, somehow, by her association with them. She’d known they all disapproved, but this? And to think that she’d thought they were friends. They’d planned this, of course they had, to invite her and reject her all at once, to humiliate her. And Darcy. She’d hoped, prayed, that it might be just a phase, that he would come back, come around. But no. No, she’s committed one too many sins now. A woman audacious enough to want a career of her own. A woman with a scar that mars her face. A woman who is getting married to an orphan off the streets of New York.

“You mighta mentioned as much.” Jack says, eerily calm, though she knows it’s just a front, knows him too well not to see the tension in his shoulders and the set of his jaw, the expression on his face that means that he wants to knock somebody into next week. “Ace, they ain’t worth you gettin’ worked up over-“

“Everybody keeps leaving, Jack.”

Her voice is barely a whisper, but over it Jack is pretty sure he hears his heart crack in two. “Oh, sweetheart.”

Jack takes hold of her, pulling her into his embrace, one hand coming up to cradle the back of her head, holding her against him, letting her shake and tremble in his arms. And he knows that this isn’t about the dinner, not really, or about these people not coming to the wedding, that this is just the straw that broke the camel’s back, but still, he wishes that they could start the evening over again, that those women back there would agree to attend so that he wouldn’t have to see her cry.

“They all keep leaving me.” She mumbles into his chest. “I don’t understand - I don’t understand why who I am isn’t ever good enough.”

“You’s more’n good enough.” He tells her, face buried in her hair, dropping kisses along her hairline. “You’s brilliant. An’ ‘f they can’t see that, then they’s blind.”

“I don’t want you to leave too. When I turn out not to be what you wanted.”

And that’s it, isn’t it. They’re both walking on eggshells, waiting for the other one to leave, and they know it.

“Hell, Ace,” Jack tilts his head back to look at the sky, trying to blink back the sudden wetness in his eyes, because he’s not alone, he’s never been alone through any of this, because she feels the same damn way about him as he feels about her, “that’s s’posed to be _my_ line.”

He lets her sob into his chest for a little bit before he pulls away just slightly, hooking two fingers beneath her chin and forcing her to look at him. “C’mon, I’s got somethin’ to show you.”

It takes Katherine longer than it probably should to realise that Jack is directing them toward the house, soon to be their house. She worries, momentarily, about somebody seeing them going in together, late at night, and the two of them not yet married, but quickly dismisses it. People are clearly going to think what they like no matter what the truth is, so damn them all to hell.

Jack unlocks the door and leads her up the stairs, then higher, into the attic space that’s going to be their room, eventually. Before they get there, though, Jack stops, turns to her, stuffs his hand in his hair. “Now, I was goin’ to save this for after we was married, but, here.”

And then he takes her in, and turns on the lights.

The entire ceiling is covered with one enormous painting. Up one of the eaves, there’s a sunset happening over a cityscape, and – yes, it is, of course it is, it’s Santa Fe. Not the real Santa Fe, of which Katherine’s seen photographs which she studiously hides from Jack, anxious not to steal what little childhood he’s scraped together, but Jack’s Santa Fe; one that’s cool and green and lush, with haphazard clay houses clustered along the horizon, giving way to a sky that swirls in oranges and purples and pinks, before fading up, up, into the zenith of the eaves, and then down, onto the other one of them, easing into a wash of midnight blue, dotted with darkened clouds and stars – so many stars, winking and hopeful – and a moon, full and yellow and with craters that almost seem to form a smile.

“Oh, Jack,” she breathes, “it’s beautiful.”

“Y’like it?” He asks, and he actually looks nervous when she turns to face him, one long finger scratching at the back of his neck.

“Like it?” She laughs, tears in her eyes. “I love it.”

“Good.” Jack nods. “I wanted you to be able to look at it, so’s you won’t worry ‘bout me leavin’ for Santa Fe no more. ‘Cos I’s got it right here.”

When he says it, he knows that it’s true. Santa Fe isn’t a voice that’s calling out to him in the night anymore, there’s no craving for adventure on the frontier. He’s happy here. It’s a strange feeling, this contentment, but it’s the most wonderful one he’s ever known.

And, oh, the way that he’s looking at her. Jack’s never been one for big speeches. Sure, he can stir up the newsies when he needs to, or murmur sweet nothings to a girl that he’s just kissed. But this? This is new. Or maybe it isn’t new, maybe she just hasn’t taken the time to look before.

“We should get blankets.” She announces.

“Eh?” That was not what he was expecting, honestly.

Katherine scurries down the stairs, fully ignoring Jack’s pleas to be careful, and finds the linen cupboard where she’s already stowed the few cushions, blankets, and sheets that they’ve scavenged to furnish their new home. They’re all mismatched, in a way that would send her mother into cardiac arrest, but Katherine’s pleased with them; they’re quaint, somehow, in their patchwork patterns and clashing colours, messy, all of them, but pretty in their own right. Scooping them into her arms, she heads back upstairs, where Jack has barely moved an inch, his forehead crinkled in confusion even as she spreads them out on the floor and tugs him down onto them.

When she lies back to stare up at the ceiling, Jack finally gets the message, lying down beside her and pulling her close.

“Did you paint in actual constellations?” She asks, her voice quiet.

“Davey told me if I was goin’ to do it, I had to get my astronomy accurate.” Jack replies, a note of amusement in his voice. _Only Davey._

“See that one?” She points upwards at a collection of white dots and Jack tilts his head to one side, following the line of her finger. “That’s Hercules. You can only see that one well in summer. It’s the eighteenth today, you know, of July.”

Jack frowns. Is this some sort of anniversary? He’s sure that isn’t yet. Is he supposed to remember the date of their first kiss? The day that he met her? Damnit, first test and he’s failed. “And?”

“It’s a year since the strike started.”

And, yes, he supposes it is. He’s hardly even noticed. The person he was a year ago feels foreign to him now, someone he’d pit as a stranger if he met him in the street. He wonders if seventeen-year-old strike-leader Jack Kelly would be proud of the man that he’s become. About to turn twenty, impossibly, it seems, about to get married. Owns a suit, a house, paints fucking commissions for rich toffs. He hopes that Jack Kelly would be proud. This Jack Kelly is. 

“‘S been one helluvah year.” He sighs, and that’s the understatement of the new century. Jack turns his head, watches Katherine in profile, the soft curve of her lips, the way that her eyes sparkle. “Wouldja change anythin’? ‘F you could?”

“There’s lots of things I’d like to change.” Katherine says, still staring straight up at the ceiling, unable to tear her eyes away.

“Like what?” Jack asks, not entirely sure that he wants to know her answer.

“You not nearly dying would be nice.” Katherine smiles, wry and wistful, as she turns to face him, her face so close to his that their noses almost touch. Jack’s breath hitches in his throat. “And my house not burning down. And not getting disowned.”

“Fair.”

“But I wouldn’t change anything.”

“No?” The question is so quiet, it’s almost a whisper.

“Changing things might mean I wouldn’t be where I am right now. And I wouldn’t change that for the world.”

Eventually though, they have to move. The world isn’t going to stop turning because they’re where they want to be. There are other people to think about, work projects, a wedding. It’s only the promise of the wedding, of knowing that he’ll get to lie beside Katherine and stare at the ceiling in this room every night for the rest of his life, come August, that persuades Jack up and out of bed. “We oughta get you back, ‘fore Morton has a conniption.”

“Will you get us an actual bed, before we move in?” Katherine groans, wincing at the twinge in her back as she sits up.

“You propositionin’ me, Ace?” Jack asks, wiggling his eyebrows, and is rewarded with Katherine throwing a cushion at his head. He laughs, delighted. “I’ll get you twenty, ‘f you wants ‘em.”

“One will do just fine.” She sighs, shaking her head. Then she looks up at the sky once more, her eyes skimming over constellations and clouds alike and whispers the next part. “When I’m with you, the evening always seems to come too soon.”


	39. Chapter 39

Edith arrives two days before the wedding on a train that pulls into Grand Central Station.

Katherine is waiting for her, face upturned, soaking in the warm rays of sunlight that stream down from the windows high above, illuminating the marble floors. Sometimes she wonders how the sun can reach its rays through all smog and dust of the city to light everything up so brightly. She looks away, however, when the train pulls in, blinking as she scans the windows, seeking for a hope of her sister.

There’s still something irrational deep inside of Katherine’s chest that is determined that Edith won’t step off the train, that she’ll shun her like the rest of the family has. But she does, carrying a particularly stylish carpet bag that is, in Katherine’s opinion, far too large for a stay of four days. She doesn’t hug Katherine when she opens her arms, instead taking the opportunity to hand the carpet bag to her sister. The inside of Katherine’s mouth tastes sour and metallic, like rejection.

Still, it’s going to take more than that to dull Katherine’s mood. Her sister is here and she’s getting married to the love of her life in less than two days.

By the time they reach the restaurant, however, Katherine seems to have exhausted all possible topics of conversation, faced with the icy wall of Edith’s monosyllabic replies. Katherine orders them both drinks, then asks Edith about her summer, which had been spent, it turns out, mostly alone at the school, as most of the other girls returned home.

Edith breezily gives Katherine a thumbnail sketch of her summer, ruled over by the odious housemistress Mrs. Pinks and in the company of the only two other girls who hadn’t returned home for the summer, Rosa Nelson and Emily Powell. Rosa was only nine, and therefore, according to the playground politics, a completely unsuitable companion, and Emily Powell apparently had rather unfortunate ears. Katherine privately wonders what exactly it is about a person’s ears that could cause Edith to deem them ‘unfortunate’, but decides that it’s probably better not to ask.

“So,” Edith says, coming to the end of her little speech, “summer there was awful. I hope Father has the house finished before long. I should rather _die_ than spend many more holidays there.”

Katherine nods. Living a life so closely intertwined with the newsies has changed her perspective beyond repair, to the point where she wants to shake her little sister for her lack of gratitude. She doesn’t, though. Instead, sipping at her drink, she makes an offer.

“You could stay with Jack and I, at Christmas, if you like.”

Edith frowns, clearly blindsided. “Doesn’t he want your first married Christmas to be just the two of you?”

“We’ll have about thirty newsies invading our house on Christmas Day anyway;” Katherine laughs, “one more person isn’t going to make a jot of difference to Jack. Besides, you know he loves you to pieces.”

She’s just on the wrong side of too nervous to meet her little sister’s eyes as she makes the offer, so Katherine studies the menu in front of her with intensity. She’s never looked so interested in different types of pasta whilst simultaneously not caring about them in the slightest. When she finally chances looking up, Edith is staring back at her as if she isn’t entirely sure what to do with this information. Finally, the girl nods.

“Only if I’m not imposing.”

“You’re family.” Katherine replies, waving her hand, dismissive, despite having to squash down an internal cheer.

The restaurant, she decides, is probably what sways it – their father had brought them here, once, as children, on Lucy’s birthday. They’d had ice cream sundaes (Katherine’s was bigger than her head and she’d been sick after, but it was completely worth it) and she remembers that Edith, only about three, at the time, had been mesmerised by the chandelier and the flecks of light that it refracted onto the walls. Katherine hopes that Edith remembers it properly, that the location has something to do with her agreement. It’s one of very few happy memories they have, as a family, and she wants, despite it all, Edith to remember Joseph Pulitzer that way, as the father who bought them ice cream sundaes. In Katherine’s mind he’ll always be overshadowed by the man he’s become, but there’s still a chance for Edith.

“So?” Edith wrinkles her pretty nose, drawing Katherine out of the past. “Plenty of family are still impositions. Think about Uncle Worthington. It was an imposition every time he stayed.”

And, to be fair, she has a point. Katherine is disinclined to speak ill of the dead, but lord knows she’s glad that she hasn’t had to deal with his nonsense for the three years since his death. Uncle Worthington, having never married (which was a circumstance easily explained by those who knew him, if not those who knew his bank balance) was invited every year, without fail, to Christmas and Easter dinners. Uncle Worthington was a gruff man who had appalling table manners and an accent that dripped with old money. He was perpetually being asked _do you know the Bishop of Norwich?_ and, having consumed the quantities of port that one can assume from that phrase, would promptly fall asleep at the dinner table. One particularly memorable year, this temporary loss of consciousness caused his toupée to slip off his head and into the flame of the candle set in the centre of the dining table. Katherine had been sent to her room without dessert for taking what her mother termed _uncharitable delight in another’s misfortune._

“Yes, well, you aren’t nearly so irritating as Uncle Worthington. You don’t fall asleep at the dinner table or correct people’s pronunciation. _And_ , our family isn’t really that representative. Jack got me to realise that.”

“Jack?” Edith frowns. “He doesn’t have a family.”

“Yes, he does.” Katherine replies, the corners of her mouth turning up a little in a sad smile as she reaches across the table to cover Edith’s hand with her own. “Jack just had to find his. We’re lucky. We’ve got one already.”

It’s a family that Katherine grows ashamed of, however, when she introduces Edith to Medda and Daisy in the back room of the theatre where they’re going to get ready for the wedding.

“Miss Medda, Daisy, this is my sister, Edith.”

“Pleased to meet you.” The girl nods to Medda, before turning her gaze on Daisy, looking the woman up and down. “I’m surprised I haven’t met you before, if you’re going to be Katherine’s bridesmaid. What does your father do?”

Daisy looks rather taken aback by the question, shooting a questioning glance over Edith’s head to Katherine. Katherine resists the urge to hide her face in her hands at her sister’s inability to read the sodding room. _What does your father do?_ To be fair, she can’t completely blame her sister, after all, in the kind of circles that Edith is used to moving in, it’s a very reasonable question. Still. Maybe they need to have a conversation about tactfulness. Katherine wonders, distantly, when exactly she took on the parental role in this relationship.

“My father’s dead.” Daisy says, her voice flat.

“I’m very sorry.” Edith says, not sounding very sorry at all. She doesn’t think she’d mind all that much if her father died, not like she minded when Lucy died. Her father dying would mean that she wouldn’t have to go to boarding school anymore, and that she would have a lot of money. It’s not like she ever sees him anyway. “What _did_ he do?”

“He worked down at the docks. My ma took in laundry.” Edith’s expression remains carefully schooled throughout Daisy’s pronouncement, but there’s something hard in it. “Curious little thing, ain’t you?”

All subsequent interactions are similarly tense, though Edith doesn’t say anything outright rude until Katherine ushers her into the dressing room to try on her bridesmaid’s dress.

“Seriously, Katherine, another child of a dockyard worker? Really?”

And Katherine could deal with Edith’s snobbery well enough, goodness knows that two years ago she’d have felt the same, if it wasn’t for the word ‘another’. Because she knows all too well who that _another_ is referring to. She can’t believe Edith, sometimes, after the all the kindness that Jack’s displayed towards her, taking her to the park, comforting her after the fire, and this is how she repays him, mocking his parentage?

“Mind your manners.” Katherine grits out. She is not going to ruin this over one word.

“Mind whose company you’re in.” Edith replies, her tone mild, derisive. “She’s a _showgirl,_ Katherine.”

“And you’re rude. Put your dress on –“ Katherine says, turning around to hand it to her sister, then stopping mid-sentence, “- is that a corset?”

It’s a silly question, really, because of course it is. There’s nothing else that looks quite like that. It’s an underbust corset, at least, thank goodness, but still. Katherine hadn’t worn her first one until she was sixteen.

“Mrs. Pinks got it for me;” Edith says, casual as anything, slipping the offered dress on over her head, “she says it will improve my figure.”

“Edith, you’re fourteen.”

“And?” The girl looks back over her shoulder, daring. Katherine sighs.

“Never mind. Just put your dress on and get sorted.”

…

That night, Katherine finds a letter, postmarked as delivered that morning, in her pigeonhole in Miss Morton’s hallway.

_Dear Katherine,_

_I hope this letter arrives prior to the wedding; I have sent it in plenty of time, however you know all too well the perils of the transatlantic postal service._

_If it does, I urge you to reconsider. I know that you will wish to burn this letter for that mere sentence, but I beg of you, as your mother, to hear what I have to say. Marriage is not the romantic notion you seem to have so eagerly adopted, swayed by good looks and charm. I was like that too, once, if you can believe such things of your father, knowing him as he is now. He was young, handsome, ambitious. He also was courting another woman whilst he was courting me and failed to inform me of his Jewish heritage until after we were married. I tell you these things not to give you further fuel for your hatred of your father, as I know you do not need it, but to inform you as to the nature of men. You are young, so very young, though I know you do not feel it, and you know little of their ways. Your young man will hurt you, if you are not careful. He has already destroyed your reputation, do not let him destroy you as well._

_If, however, you are as immovable as you seem, then allow me to give you some advice. Keep a tight hold on your finances, and save whatever dowry your father gives you out of your husband’s way, for I fought long and hard for you to have one. Men of his class are too quick to fritter away their pay on drink and bets. You will know, I think, even if you have not fallen already, what to expect from the marriage bed. My only advice is that it will hurt less with time and that you should endeavour not to show your discomfort. It is not something to be gossiped about, and is of less importance than others will make it out to be, as if one is compliant it will go by quite quickly._

_I shall try to write to you when I can, though I must insist that when I return from France that you do not approach the house. Your father will not wish to be distressed by your presence. I do, however, hope to return from France soon. The waters and air of Aix-les-Bains have improved my health greatly and most days I am able to emerge from the villa for two or three hours at a time without experiencing tremors. Constance is also benefitting from the climate; she is grown taller and has more colour in her cheeks. She does, however, plague her governess endlessly. I believe she shall grow up to be more like you are than I had hoped._

_I beg of you, Katherine, to heed what I have written. It is not often that something changes your life so wholly as marriage does._

_Your loving mother,_

_Kate Pulitzer_

It takes until her third read through for Katherine to realise that her mother never once used Jack’s name. She burns the letter in the fire, watches it crumple and crinkle and blacken in the fire’s invisible fingers as she dresses for bed.

Katherine falls asleep staring at a darkened ceiling, imagining that she can see constellations.

…

Jack is informed, in no uncertain terms, that he will be spending the night before the wedding at the Jacobs’. He grumbles about it, unused to this idea of getting ready with other people, but Davey doesn’t give him much of an option. He draws the line, however, when Esther tries to make Les give up his bed for Jack. Not a chance is Jack ruining that cushy little setup that kid has going on with his bedroom, and he puts his foot down, insisting on taking the couch. Which is how Jack ends up, on the night before his wedding, ensconced in the comfortable Jacobs family circle, a fire in the grate and a smile on his face. Mayer has fallen asleep in his chair by the fire, which means that he can finally relax and pay attention to the flurry of questions that Les is throwing at him.

“Have you ever stolen an apple?” Les asks, thoughtful, from his place on the rug where he’s playing some sort of snap with Sarah that features different types of fruit on the cards.

Jack wonders whether it’s possible for the bottom of your stomach to just drop straight out of you. He flicks his eyes to Esther. _Lie, Kelly, you’re good enough at it._

“I plead the fourth.” Jack laughs, throwing his hands up in mock surrender.

“It’s the fifth, you nitwit.” Davey grins, and just like that, what he’s said is funny and not evasive, putting all the blame onto Les and his interrogations.

“‘S why I keeps you around, ain’t it?” Jack punches Davey’s arm, then regrets the gesture, even as gentle as it was, his eyes flicking back to Esther. “You’s my lawyer an’ all that.”

“I am never defending you in court.” David snorts.

“Rude. Why not?”

“Because you would definitely be found guilty.”

 _Oh, Dave, if only you knew. If only you knew how often I’ve been found guilty._ Jack hopes, a sick kind of shame in his stomach, that none of the Jacobs ever figure out quite how many times he’s been got up in front of a judge.

“How dare you.” Jack claps a hand to his heart and gasps in mock dismay. Les giggles. “I’d be innocent.”

“Unlikely,” Davey raises his eyebrows, “and even if you were, you’d annoy the judge enough to be held in contempt of court.”

“Lotsa people hold me in contempt, ain’t done me no harm ‘fore now.”

Esther laughs at that and something proud blooms inside of Jack’s chest at the sound. He hopes that her laughter means that she doesn’t know about how many apples he’s actually stolen, and how many times he’s actually annoyed a judge. Because this, a family around the fire, laughing – he thinks that it’s something that he could get used to. He can’t wait until this is him and Kath.

Eventually, however, Les is shepherded off to bed and Mayer is roused from his slumber by the fire. Davey claps him on the shoulder before following suit. Sarah, however, is slower to gather herself, picking at the threads she’s weaving together with her needle.

“Are you nervous?” She asks, as Davey heads toward the bedroom that he and Les share.

“Nah, not really.” Jack grins, stuffing his hand in his hair. “I’s wanted it for so long I’s jus’ ready for it to happen, now.”

Esther reappears in the doorway, having successfully tucked (or, more likely, wrangled) Les into bed and places her hand on Jack’s shoulder. He flinches, the touch unexpected, the doorway being behind the sofa where he’s sat, but frankly he’s counting it as a win that he’s managed to remain seated and hasn’t thrown himself to the other side of the room.

“Are you alright, Jack? You’ve got everything you need? Blankets-“

“I’s jus’ swell, ma’am, thank you.” He cuts her off.

It’s a strange feeling, being fussed over. Katherine does it, naturally, but it’s different, coming from her. She’s a little more subtle about it, a little more teasing in a way that helps him to feel a little bit less like she’s saving him all over again. Esther has no such qualms. It’s pleasant, don’t get him wrong, but it’s not something he’s used to. It’s not something he trusts.

“Jack-“

“Sorry, sorry, Esther.” Jack laughs a little, ducking his head. “I really ‘ppreciate you openin’ your home to me.”

“You know that you’re always welcome. Just come and find us if you need anything, okay?”

“Thank you.”

“Sarah,” Esther raises her gaze to her daughter, curled in the armchair, and gives her the kind of look that Jack isn’t entirely sure what it means, “don’t be too long.”

“I won’t.” Sarah meets her mother’s eyes in something like defiance.

Lines appear on Esther’s forehead and she purses her lips a little, but she does nothing more than give Jack’s shoulder a final squeeze and retire to bed. Jack stares into the fire, his eyes boring into smouldering embers, unsure of quite how to talk to Sarah. He only has two ways of talking to girls. He has flirting (which would be entirely inappropriate given that he’s getting married tomorrow and she’s his best friend’s sister) and he has the way that he talks to Katherine, which is something like flirting, except that, you know, he’s ridiculously, pathetically in love with her and would be quite content to do nothing other than talk to her for the rest of his days.

“You’re sure that you’ll be happy?” Sarah finally asks, continuing to work at a piece of lace, her feet tucked up under her in the cradle of the armchair.

“Well, nobody can ever be sure o’ that, can they?” He shrugs. “I jus’ know Kath’s the one I wanta work on bein’ happy with.”

So, Sarah gets up and goes to bed, and thinks _enough_ , because it’s not the easy decision, but it’s the right one.

And Jack lies on the sofa in the Jacobs’ living room, staring at a ceiling cross-crossed with beams, and thinks about how, this time tomorrow, he’ll be married to the love of his life; because it’s not been easy, him and Katherine, but it’s right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They get married in the next chapter. Get excited. Comments, as always, make my day.
> 
> Also, because of upcoming plotted themes, I've elected to mark this fic as 'M'. Things are going to get a bit darker. 
> 
> The details given in the letter about Joseph Pulitzer are historically accurate. ‘Do you know the Bishop of Norwich?’ was a question asked when a man, having poured himself a glass from the port bottle, failed to pass the bottle along to the person next to him, thus preventing the beverage from circulating around the table. The person being asked would say ‘no’ and then the asker would reply with ‘terribly nice fellow, but he always forgets to pass the port’, as a subtle hint to make the person pass the port. This is one of my favourite historical facts and I just had to get it in somewhere (and I have been at a very posh dinner where it was used, though I’m sad to say that it was not me who did the asking).


	40. Chapter 40

The day of the wedding, Crutchie turns up on the doorstep of Medda’s theatre asking to see Katherine. It’s testament to how well things have worked out for their relationship so far that Katherine is immediately convinced that something terrible has happened.

Her stomach swoops in a way that she’s only ever experienced once before, that time she rode in Uncle Worthington’s motorcar and they went over a bump too fast, when she opens the door and sees Crutchie standing there. _Crutchie. Why is Crutchie here?_

“Is everything okay? Is Jack okay?”

“He’s fine, Kath,” Crutchie rolls his eyes; _and he thought Jack was whipped,_ “he jus’ wanted me to give you this, ‘cos ‘pparently I’s some sorta messenger boy now.”

“Oh.” She breathes out. “Thanks, Crutchie, thank you.”

Crutchie lets his eyes rove up and down her figure, whistles low under his breath. In the middle of it all, Katherine has forgotten that she is in her wedding dress. Admittedly, her hair is half done and she’s barefoot because she’s still getting ready, damnit, but it’s okay.

“You look… wow. Jus’, wow.” Crutchie breathes.

“Thank you.” Katherine laughs, a little, nervous thing. Then, feeling unbelievably self-conscious, does a twirl. “Do you think Jack will like it?”

Crutchie raises his eyebrows. “I think Jack might pass out when he sees you.”

The drawing, when she unfolds it, is a sketch in delicate pencil lines of two hands intertwined, fingers so tightly locked together that it’s almost difficult to work out which fingers belong to which hand. Beneath it, in Jack’s childish scrawl, with the ‘s’, predictably, written the wrong way round, are the words _for sure._ And somehow, every niggling worry that’s been lurking in the back of Katherine’s head for weeks, about whether she’s good enough and whether they’re doing the right thing and whether they’re going to have enough money, all go out of the window. _For sure._

…

Jack knows that this is supposed to be the happiest day of his life. And he’s pretty sure that it will be, by the evening, but so far? Awful. Absolutely awful.

He’s never been so nervous that he can’t eat before, not even during the strike, but he hasn’t even managed to touch the bacon that Esther made for breakfast, pushing it around his plate with something sick twisting in his stomach. He’s completely pathetic. And then he looks like _girl_ having to kick Davey and Les out of their room to get changed into his suit, because no way in hell are they seeing the amount of scars that he’s collected over the years. Les, after all, sweet as he is, doesn’t know when or how to keep his damn mouth shut, and goodness knows he’d ask questions about the Refuge. And then he might tell Davey and Esther what Jack’s answers were, and Jack couldn’t bear that.

So, by the time they get to the church, Jack’s done enough pacing to wear a hole in the Jacobs’ living room carpet and he’s feeling vaguely like he’s about to throw up.

Medda, bless her, has done a frankly phenomenal job setting up the church, with little ribbons to decorate the ends of the pews that she’s fished out of the costume box at the Bowery. When Katherine had gone to the florists, she’d been quoted something ridiculous to have little bunches of flowers on the ends of the pews (a figure which, when she repeated it to Jack, nearly knocked him to the floor) and so Medda has, yet again, saved the day. There’s something of gratitude inside of Jack as they approach the church, for all that she’s done, but it’s rather overwhelmed by the effort of not turning around and sprinting in the opposite direction.

“I’s surprised you ain’t burst into flames yet.” Jack mutters to Davey as the two of them step into the church and head towards the altar.

“I’m Jewish, Jack, not a demon.” Davey rolls his eyes, sitting next to Jack where he’s sprawled himself in the front pew on the right-hand side of the church. “My God and the Christian one are the same, Christians just think that he sent his son a couple of hundred years after my people sorted everything out.”

“Wait, seriously?” Jack pauses in his efforts to dry his sweaty palms on his trousers to look over at Davey.

“You were brought up by nuns, how do you not know this?”

“Brought up’s a bit much,” Jack shrugs, “dragged up, more like.” Davey nods a little, earning an elbow in his side.

“How’re you feelin’?”

“Like I’s goin’ to puke.” Jack leans forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. “Reckon that’s normal?”

“I’d say so. Why are you nervous?”

He closes his eyes. “Jus’ worried she’s goin’ to realise that I ain’t good enough for her. Or that her father’s goin’ to turn up an’ object. Or-“

Davey cuts him off, clapping a hand on Jack’s shoulder. “She won’t realise that, because (a) you are good enough for her and (b) she loves you. As for her father, do you really think any of the newsies would let him set so much as a foot in this church before they soaked him?”

“Fair.” He snorts.

“You’ll be fine, Jack. It’s Katherine.”

“I know. Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me now.” David elbows him back. “You’re goin’ to have to do this for me, one day.”

Finally, Jack glances up, confused. “Ain’t you goin’ to ask Les?”

Davey looks at him in disbelief. “You think he’s goin’ to make me less nervous?”

And, well, Jack thinks, that’s a fair point.

…

Outside, Katherine prays that the ribbon that binds her bouquet together will soak up at least some of the sweat from her palms. Goodness knows she’ll drop it halfway up the aisle if her nervous skin doesn’t stop producing a veritable lake. Will Jack want to marry somebody with sweaty hands?

“Katherine,” Ralph looks over at her, doubtful, fiddling with his solid silver cufflinks, “you know that you can still back out-“

“Ralph.” Katherine cuts him off, watching as Daisy and Edith set off down the aisle, preceding her. “I have never been more sure of anything in my entire life.”

It takes her saying it to realise that it’s true. She can’t think of doing anything else, can’t imagine her life without him in it.

“-because there’d be no shame in it.” Ralph finishes, as if she hasn’t said anything at all.

“No shame in leaving a good man at the altar?”

“No shame in leaving a man who is _below you_ at the altar.”

She sets her jaw, chin jutting out. “I’m going to pretend that you didn’t just say that. Now walk me down the damn aisle.” 

Ralph, to his credit, doesn’t gape at Katherine’s language, but instead takes hold of her arm and sets his shoulders, taking them through the church doors and down the aisle.

Now, Jack had known that Katherine would make a beautiful bride, but this? Well, it’s a struggle to keep his jaw from dropping. She looks like a fucking angel. His words, that night, a year ago, have never been more true. _If there was a way I could grab holda somethin’, to make time stop. Jus’ so’s I could keep lookin’ at you._ He barely manages to collect himself enough to nod at Ralph, his mouth dry, as the other man shakes his hand. And then Katherine looks up at him and smiles, and he damn near falls over.

Reverend Bates clears his throat. And, well, it’s probably a bit sappy for Jack to have forgotten that anybody else in the world exists, isn’t it? Still, he can’t help himself, and so, as they turn to face the minister, he grabs hold of her hand, twisting their fingers together just the way he drew them this morning, because she’s right there, and she’s his, and he wants to make sure that she’s real. He almost laughs aloud when he realises that her palm is just as sweaty as his.

It all goes rather well, really, other than when Katherine starts crying halfway through him saying his vows. Jack’s eyes go wide, his brain scrambling to figure out how exactly he’s managed to screw this up, but then she whispers _carry on, you idiot, I’m happy_ in a voice thick with tears, so he stammers his way through the rest of the words.

Jack’s never felt elation like it when Reverend Bates tells him that he’s allowed to kiss Katherine. He’s absolutely sure that he looks like a complete fool, grinning like a maniac, but he can’t wipe the stupid, soppy smile off his face as he turns to face her, stepping right up into her space and resting their foreheads together. He’ll never forget the way that she shivers when his words fan across her face.

“D’ya trust me?”

Eyes closed, no hesitation. “For sure.”

And really, those are the only two words Jack’s ever needed to hear. He’s pretty sure that he could live forever on just those two words. And they’re definitely all the permission he needs to take hold of her by the waist and dip her into a full-on Hollywood kiss, swallowing the squeak that she lets out, and then lapping up the giggles that she lets out as well. Katherine is suddenly immensely glad that Cornelia, Rose, and Eliza aren’t in attendance as she’s pretty sure at least one of them would have swooned into a full-out faint.

Somewhere, off in the distance, the newsies have exploded into raucous cheers and wolf-whistles, and it only makes her laugh more into Jack’s mouth because she just knows that Ralph is horrified, and so is the Reverend, but this is her and Jack, and she’s never been happier in her entire life – not even when she got her story on the front page. Though, she thinks, as he eases her back onto her feet, a kiss like that might just make the front page.

They’re laughing, breathless, completely immune to anything other than each other. Until Katherine blushes and bats at his chest with her little bouquet. “Show off.”

“Got plenty to be showin’ off ‘bout, ain’t I?” Jack grins. “I’s jus’ married the most beautiful woman in the world.”

…

The meal goes better than expected. No food gets thrown by the newsies (well, a little bit of food gets thrown, but between Crutchie’s threatening glances and Davey’s disapproving glares, it’s practically unnoticeable). There’s a definite culture clash between Jack’s motley family and Edith, Ralph, and Bill, the last of whom, bless his soul, had managed to make the wedding – something that earned him an enormous hug from Katherine. But it could go a lot worse. Jack turns the charm up like nobody’s business, and soon has got Ralph talking and laughing. Admittedly, getting Katherine’s brother on side might have something to do with Race helpfully plying Ralph with whiskies at every opportunity, but, Katherine thinks, you’ve got to take what you can get.

Despite the size of the wedding party, Katherine and Jack are completely separated for the vast majority of the evening, doing their duty of mingling. Still, he keeps shooting her these smiles and glances across the room and when he does ever get a moment with her, whenever they pass each other as they move between Luigi’s tables, he pulls her close and whispers in her ear something about how beautiful she looks or how lucky he feels.

And well, Katherine’s pretty sure this is what happiness feels like.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is short and poorly written, but they're married! (Which means I now get to write domestic fluff, which is my jam.) Comments, as always, make me very happy :)


	41. Chapter 41

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter gets very sexy. There’s no actual sex shown, but it’s heavily implied (like three elephants on top of one another heavily implied). There’s also very little plot, it’s just romantic, but I wanted it in here, so feel free to skip it if it’s not something you’re into. Much of the content is lifted from So Long As I’s Got You, which is what you can go and read if you want the smutty version of this chapter, but there is some extra content (a scene at the end) and the explicit stuff has been edited out. I’m going to post the next chapter later on today for all you folks who aren’t into knowing about the Kelly’s sex lives. Comments, as always, make my day x

“I’s been thinkin’ ‘bout this all day,” Jack rumbles, his mouth close enough to her ear that she can feel his warm breath fanning across her skin, his tone all low and dark and heavy-accented in the way that makes her stomach turn inside out, “ever since you’s walked down that aisle, lookin’ like some type o’ angel. _All day,_ Katherine.”

He sounds almost desperate, needy somehow, in a way that she can barely bring herself to meet his eyes. But she forces herself to, clamping down on the fizzing in her belly and reminding herself that this is _her_ Jack, the one who, despite being a little rough around the edges, is kind and gentle and patient. So she looks up at him and feels herself smile as she sees the familiar spark in his eyes. He’s still holding her hand from where he’s helped her out of the carriage; she gives his hand a quick, meaningful squeeze before dropping it and turning around to thank the driver. The elderly driver doffs his cap and then clicks his tongue for the carriage to begin drawing away.

They both turn then, looking up at the red brick house with the white-washed windows they’ve painted themselves, tall and thin, sandwiched in the middle of a terrace. Theirs. Their house. Together. Jack grabs her hand and looks down at her, barely suppressing his signature grin, before tugging her up the path to their front door, all the while fishing around inside his suit jacket for the keys.

Katherine shifts awkwardly, unsure of how to behave as he tries, with shaking hands, to fit the key into the lock. It’s a full thirty seconds before she hears the lock click open and she spends every one of them pressing her lips together to suppress a sarcastic remark. _This is Jack’s night,_ she reminds herself, and he had made the wedding beautiful for her. He’d been on his absolute best behaviour and had somehow managed to charm her family members. And how could he not? His hair had been neatly combed during the service that morning, but his curls were now askew, back in their usual untameable, adorable mass and his tie was pulled loose around his neck, the collar of his shirt slightly open. Who could resist him when he looked like that, talking animatedly with fingers flying across a thousand invisible canvases and his eyes crinkling with warm smiles. But he was all hers, like this, relaxed and delicious.

When he doesn’t move, she reaches for the door handle, ready to let herself into their new home. Jack’s hand flies out to stop her and she wonders momentarily whether she’s already managed to screw up. But then Jack has hold of her through her layers of petticoats and he sweeps her up into his arms and carries her over the threshold. It’s a difficult manoeuvre; he has to push the handle down with his elbow and back himself in to prevent smacking her head against the doorframe. His tongue is stuck out in concentration throughout the whole endeavour and they’re both laughing quietly by the time he’s kicked the door closed behind them with his foot.

“Welcome home, Mrs. Kelly.” He sets her down carefully and presses a kiss to the top of her head.

“I still think Mr. Plumber would have been better.” She smiles into the lapel of his jacket.

“You would.” He snorts, breaking away from her, eyes alight and anticipatory fingers fluttering by his sides in the same way they do when he’s about to start work on a fresh canvas. He looks positively gleeful.

Katherine suddenly feels immensely self-conscious, dropping her eyes and searching for somewhere to put the little bouquet of flowers she’s been toting around all day. There’s a vase on top of the side table in the hallway, so she picks it up and mumbles something about putting them in water. Jack follows after her like a mildly confused lost puppy.

The kitchen is small and at the back of the house. It’s strange for her, being in a kitchen. The last time she was in the one at the house was when she was a child, playing hide and seek in amongst the barrels and wooden tables, tugging at the maids’ skirts and stealing morsels from the fingers of the indulgent cook. Katherine wishes she was back there, amongst the herbs hanging up to dry, with the steam from a thousand iron pans on top of the enormous black range filling the air, fresh biscuits cooling on the sideboard.

She stands at the sink, cold water filling the vase, and feels Jack come up behind her and wrap his arms, strong and warm, around her middle, nuzzling the nape of her neck. She knows two things with instant clarity. The first, that someone could offer her the moon and she wouldn’t trade it for being stood with the man she loves in the house they share. The second, that she’s scared out of her wits. She sets the vase down in the sink and spins around in his arms. Jack pulls back, looking mildly alarmed.

“I have no clue what I’m doing.” She states with finality.

“Okay…” Jack remains puzzled.

“I haven’t done this before.”

“I should hope there ain’t another husband lurkin’ somewhere.” He laughs.

“Jack-“ Katherine hisses, gesturing uncomfortably between them, “I mean I haven’t done… this before.”

“Well, I know that, Katherine.”

“I know, but… you have.” She falters, refusing to meet his eyes.

“Yeah, I has. Is that a problem?” Jack asks, dropping his arms from around her waist and folding them across his chest. _Bit late,_ he thinks.

“No, I just – normally I can do anything I set my mind to but I don’t- I couldn’t bear to disappoint you.” Katherine whispers the last few words.

“Oh, darlin’, you won’t disappoint me. You couldn’t.” Jack relaxes.

“But what if I _do_?”

“You won’t.” He says emphatically, taking both of her hands in his. “Ace. I love you. But if you don’t wanna do this – we don’t hafta.”

“No!” Jack raises an eyebrow at her outburst. “No, I do, I just – I’m scared.”

“Scared?”

“I don’t want to mess it up. I don’t want to make a fool of myself. I don’t want it to hurt.”

“You won’t, you won’t, and it won’t. Believe me, I’s gonna make sure of that.” He grins, but there’s a softness to it, a crinkling around his eyes.

“Mother said it would hurt – but mother said I also shouldn’t speak to you about it… oh, damn it all.” Katherine throws her hands up in the air and turns away from him, hiding her face.

“Hey, hey, c’mon.” Jack whispers, pulling her back to face him and tugging her close, letting her bury her face in his chest. “You need to ignore everythin’ your mother said, y’hear me? God knows I don’t want’a end up like your father.” She laughs quietly into his chest at that and Jack grins in response, resting his chin on the top of her head. “You trust me, don’cha?” She nods, face still hidden. “Then let me take care o’you, okay? An’ if you wants to stop, you jus’ says the word.”

“Okay.” She nods, slightly tearful. “I’m – I’m sorry, this wasn’t how I wanted our marriage to start-“

“It don’t matter, Ace. We’s got the rest o’ our lives to get this right.”

Jack smiles and takes her chin between his thumb and forefinger, leaning down to brush a kiss across her lips. _Okay Plumber – wait, Kelly,_ Katherine thinks to herself, changing the surname with no small amount of glee, _this is something you can do._ So she kisses him back, deep and long and languid, and somewhere along the line he gets the message and hooks his hands around the backs of her thighs and starts carrying her toward the stairs, her legs wrapped around him like some sort of monkey. He almost falls over when he starts trying to get them upstairs and they find themselves laughing into one another’s mouths, stumbling against the banister and the wall, fingers tugging at buttons. Jack feels half mad with it, with the waiting, the wanting, with her.

By the time they get into the bedroom, _their bedroom,_ Katherine has half the buttons on his dress shirt undone and has slipped one hand inside, warm fingers tugging gently at his undershirt. There’s a soft whoomph as he sets her down on the bed, but Jack doesn’t break away, not even for a moment, crawling over her and kissing down the side of her neck, kissing and biting and worrying the skin there in the way he’s learned makes her keen against him. When she starts shoving his suit jacket down and off his shoulders, he’s hardly going to say no. He rolls his broad shoulders obligingly and flings it off somewhere to his right, never breaking contact with her skin, burying his nose against it and breathing in her perfume. It’s a different one to usual, something muskier, darker, more womanly, than her usual girlishly floral scent. It makes him want to buck his hips into the mattress, but he doesn’t want to scare her, so he holds himself back. He’ll be damned if he ruins this through a lack of self-control.

And then she yelps. Jack pulls back like he’s been burned, hovering over her, propped up on his elbows and searching her face, cursing himself.

“I’m fine, I’m fine, sorry,” Katherine blushes, watching as Jack’s shoulders relax just a fraction, “my hairpin, it – stabbed me.”

Jack looks at her for a moment, long and hard, and then bursts out laughing, rolling off her and laying down by her side. In one fluid movement, he takes her hand and brings it to his lips, placing a kiss on each knuckle.

“Go on,” he chuckles, voice low and rumbling, “you’d best take ‘em out.”

He leads his flushed wife – _wife! –_ over to the vanity and sits her down in front of the mirror. Brushing her hands away, he stands behind her and removes each pin more delicately than Katherine would have thought possible with his calloused fingers, placing them in a neat pile on the polished surface of the vanity. His hands in her hair, Katherine closes her eyes and leans her head back, allowing it to rest against the muscles of Jack’s stomach. The sight of her, so trusting and vulnerable, allowing him, barely more than a street urchin, to touch her glossy hair and porcelain skin – it does something to him.

She opens her eyes when he’s done, hair cascading down, but Jack just sweeps her hair to one side and gets down on his knees to start work on the buttons at the back of her dress. The little pearl buttons are fiddly and Jack feels as though his fumbling fingers will snap one of their fastenings before he’s done. When he is done, Katherine stands and the dress slides off, white chiffon puddling around her feet, clothed in white silk stockings. She goes to turn around, unable to meet the eyes of her unclothed reflection, but Jack prevents her, fiddling once again with the fripperies of women’s undergarments as he unties her corset.

It’s only when that comes off that she hears Jack’s sharp intake of breath. So. It had been a good choice then. She’d been embarrassed to go shopping with Medda for such things, but it turns out she really was the expert.

“Fuckin’ ‘ell, Ace. Look at you.” Jack breathed and she finally managed to raise her eyes to her own reflection. Well then.

It was technically a chemise, but it could barely be called that. It was a single layer of delicate white lace, so thin it was practically see-through. She had hated it in the store, condemned its lack of practicality and pointed out that one or two good washes and it would be falling to pieces. It was only when Medda suggested it wasn’t really meant to be worn more than once, that she’d understood its implications. Jack’s reaction, at least, gave her a little courage.

“Is this all for me?” He asks, voice quiet and prayerful, his hands tentatively skimming down her sides.

“Who else would it be for?” Katherine asks, aiming for a mocking tone but hitting somewhere around a nervous giggle. “Oscar Delancey?”

Jack actually _growls_ at that and squeezes her hips possessively.

“I don’t want you sayin’ no other man’s name in this bedroom, y’hear?” Katherine nods, ducking her head and trying to avoid thinking about the rush of heat which Jack’s low, angry tone has pooling in her stomach. “S’not nice. ‘Specially when it’s that scabber.”

“It seems unfair that you’re wearing so much clothing.” Katherine musters, inwardly disappointed that her voice was barely above a whisper, trying to pacify her husband. Jack chuckles behind her, indicating either her success or that he wasn’t actually that angry at all, and holds out his hand to help her step out of the dress.

“It does, a little, doesn’t it.” He smiles, leading her over to the bed and gesturing for her to sit down.

He remains standing and Katherine watches, hands folded demurely in her lap, as he finished off the job she started earlier and unbuttoned his dress shirt, pulling his tie off, then shrugging off the white shirt, then pulling the undershirt off over his head. Katherine stares. She’s seen Jack without his shirt before of course, occasionally wandering around the lodgehouse on hot days or when he’s been in injured or sick. This is different now though. Now she has permission to look. She does, her eyes raking over her husband, all lean muscle and strength and a smattering of dark hair. In the low light of the oil lamp, his scars have all but disappeared, leaving him fresh and all hers.

“Like what you see, Mrs. Kelly?” Jack smirks, relishing the way the title feels on his tongue, sweet and smooth like honey.

Katherine’s blush returns and she lowers her eyes, fiddling with the top of her right stocking, readying herself to roll it down.

“Whoa.” Jack reaches out to stop her before dropping to his knees and gently rolling her stocking down himself. “I’s gon’ unwrap you myself, thank you very much.”

“Unwrap me?” She laughs, the noise bursting from her chest. “I’m not a present, Jack.”

“You’s a gift, though.” Jack grins up at her, his eyes alight. “Best weddin’ gift I’s coulda asked for.”

He works her other stocking down her leg, then pulls off his own shoes and socks. Then he stops, looks up at her, half wondering, half analytical.

“How much do you know?” He asks.

“A little.” Katherine blushes.

“Okay.” Jack nods, breathing out through his nose. “Remember, this ain’t about you pleasin’ me. I wants you to… enjoy yourself. An’ I’s gonna make damn sure you do. You’s just gotta… trust me. Can you do that for me, Ace?” She nods slowly. “Good.” He rubs his hands together, warming them. “Sweetheart, you jus’ say the word and we’ll stop. Okay?”

She nods again, suddenly hyper-aware of her body, the fact that she has one. That said, she’s never quite so good at being, at having a body, than when she’s with him, so she stays still on the edge of the bed.

Her feet don’t quite reach the floor and it reminds Jack that whilst she’s the strongest woman he’s ever known, god knows that he’s never managed to get one over on her, she’s also smaller than him. Delicate. Jack can’t believe his luck – this woman, this heiress, has not only given him her love, her kiss, her trust, and now her virginity? Jack doesn’t know what he did to deserve this, but he’s not complaining.

When she cries out, saying his name over and over, like a litany, Jack wonders if he’ll get to hear her say his name like that for the rest of his life. He hopes so; he hopes this is what being a husband is.

When they’re done, he rolls them over, letting Katherine sprawl across his chest like spoils of war, heaving out her little hiccupping breaths. He’s almost about to doze off when she speaks.

“Can we do that again tomorrow, please?” Katherine asks, looking up at him with a smirk that doesn’t match the innocence in her eyes as she props her chin on his chest. Jack collapses back against the pillow with a smile, wrapping his arms a little tighter around her.

“Yes, Katherine. We’s gon’ do that again tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that. Hell, I don’t wanta do anythin’ else for the rest o’ my life.”

“That might be a problem in terms of going to work.” Katherine giggles, and hell if it isn’t the most adorable thing he’s ever heard.

“Screw work.” Jack says, giving her a soft, affectionate kiss. “I don’t need nothin’ so long as I’s got you.”

…

When Katherine wakes up the next morning, she can’t quite tell where she ends and Jack begins.

She’d expected it to be more difficult than it is, sleeping with another person after so many years of sleeping alone in her big downy bed. But although the mattress on her and Jack’s bed is thinner and the bed smaller, she finds that she doesn’t really mind at all. Not when they’re intertwined like this, her head pillowed on one of his arms and his other arm wrapped around her waist, holding her close. Her left palm is flat on his chest and she can feel his heart beating and the steady rise and fall of his chest. She can’t believe that this man, all goodness and quiet strength, is hers. He looks young when he sleeps, mouth slightly open, eyes closed. Katherine has never properly appreciated how long his eyelashes are. She didn’t know men could have eyelashes like that.

Katherine shifts a little, trying to alleviate the strange soreness she feels between her legs. She finds that it’s not a soreness she particularly minds though. It feels strange, like an overworked muscle, like that throbbing ache in your legs after you’ve walked for miles and miles, but it has that same sort of satisfaction that comes from finishing the walk, too. Her body remembers him, what it’s like to have him inside her, her Jack. She knows, of course, that she ought to be mortified at the gummy sort of stickiness on her thighs and at the sharp smell of it, musk and sweat and sex, but this is how it’s supposed to be, isn’t it? Isn’t this how she’s supposed to cleave to her husband? _Husband._

As she shifts, Jack stirs beside her, snuffling into the pillow like a rudely awoken cat. She winces, wishing she hadn’t moved. She shouldn’t have, should have taken the time to admire him a little bit longer. And then she remembers that she gets to do this every morning for the rest of her life and suddenly it doesn’t seem all that bad. Jack opens his eyes slowly, blinking owlishly at her for a moment before a grin spreads across his face, caught somewhere between wonderment and wickedness.

“Good morning, husband.” She whispers, removing her hand from his chest and reaching up to trace a finger along his jaw. Under her touch, the muscle tenses, then relaxes.

“Good mornin’, Mrs. Kelly.” He murmurs back, his voice low and dark and soft from sleep, his accent as broad as she’s ever heard it. It ties her stomach into knots in the best way possible.

Jack leans close and brushes his lips against hers. It should feel silly, both of their throats dry and morning breath lurking somewhere behind their teeth, but it doesn’t. Katherine should feel disgusting, sore and sticky as she is, but, frankly, she’s never felt more beautiful. Her hands come up to tangle in his hair and Jack hums into her mouth as she tugs gently at his curls. Slow and careful, he tightens his hold on her and rolls them over. Her legs part to accommodate him, as easy as breathing, and he settles himself between them, cradled there in the sweet ‘v’ of her hips, without ever breaking their kiss. And then he brushes against her the wrong way and she whimpers, high and thready, and Jack, her darling Jack, is up on his elbows and meeting her eyes, worried and questioning.

“You sore, love?”

“A little.” He makes to move off her, but she catches hold of him and clarifies. “Good sore.”

“Yeah?” Jack smiles a little, settling back down over her and sliding a hand down between them. “Good sore, huh?”

“You’re impossible.”

“You love it.” He winks, a gesture that makes her bark out a laugh, before then doing something absolutely fantastic with his fingers that has her collapsing back onto the mattress.

She twists in his grip, wanting more. “I love _that_.”

“Oh yeah?” He does it again. “Y’know what I love?”

She raises an eyebrow.

“Your face, when you–“ he breaks off, swearing under his breath, overcome, “Katherine, angel, I could watch you do it for the rest o’ my life.”

“Jack!” She admonishes him, blushing to the very tips of her ears and grabbing a pillow to cover her face.

Despite the very… pleasant events of the night before, Katherine still isn’t fully comfortable with Jack’s brazen affection, the way he talks so frankly about things that are supposed to remain unsaid. She can hear him laughing even as she presses her legs together around his hand and sighs into the pillow. _Impossible boy._ She uncovers her face and whacks him with it, a whoomph of feathers, but he just ducks, snickering.

“I plan to let you.” She tells him.

She does let him. She lets him do it a lot.


	42. Chapter 42

Jack discovers that he loves waking up to Katherine’s face in the mornings, the way that the morning light turns her chestnut curls into a halo and carves out the nuances of her features so intricately that only he can truly know them. He loves the way that her skin feels under his hands, softer than anything he’s ever felt, and the way that the sheets drape across curves the likes of which he’s never seen. He loves the way that she grumbles if she wakes up too early and the way that she pulls him back to kiss him when he tries to get up to fix them some food, long and languid and open, and how nine times out of ten they don’t end up eating anything at all when she does that, because Jack’s spent the last year controlling himself and he doesn’t care to do it for even one more day.

Katherine’s heard stories from her married friends, covert whispers about their relations in between giggles, and, frankly, this is not what she had been expecting. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. She’s always known, of course, that despite his coarse exterior her Jack is tender and caring, but he seems to get more of a kick out of watching her pleasure than he does out of his own. That, at least, is the reason Katherine’s giving for not physically being able to get out of bed. She’s tried, in the rare, loose moments when Jack’s arm isn’t tight around her, but her legs feel like jelly and aren’t exactly cut out to support her weight right at this very moment.

Jack, for his part, seems delighted that he’s managed to incapacitate her for the best part of three whole days. The hospitality of Medda and Esther, who had stocked their cupboards and their icebox before they moved in, had made her blush with the implicit message: that there is really nothing for her and Jack to do for the next whole week except enjoy one another, in every sense of the word. But now she must admit that she’s grateful for it, because Jack is insatiable. She’s told him so a number of times and he isn’t denying it. She doesn’t exactly mind very much.

She doesn’t know whether it will wear off, this desire that burns deep in her gut to have his hands on her constantly, but she’s going to enjoy it while it lasts. And boy, his hands. His everything, really. She’s always known that Jack has a wonderful mouth, one that’s quick off the mark with witty comments and banter, but marriage has certainly made its virtues more… apparent. So, when he reaches for her across their mattress and pulls her close and she can feel the pillows rippling with his teasing laughter, she bats at the side of his head with her free hand and then lets him kiss her, and kiss her, and kiss her.

It takes them, therefore, until the fourth day of their honeymoon to drag themselves out of bed – _their_ bed – for any significant length of time. Jack is pretty sure that significant just means over an hour, because Katherine is now pottering around the kitchen – _their_ kitchen - in his shirt, the sleeves rolled up to her elbows because of how oversized it is on her, and he’s almost certain that she isn’t wearing anything underneath it. And really, you can only expect a guy to take so much.

She fixes them both mugs of coffee because she’s a terrible cook, but coffee she can manage, and sets his on the table in front of him. Katherine was, of course, intending to walk away and sit an appropriate distance away from him, across the table, seeing as she hasn’t really nailed the whole sophisticated lady thing in their marriage up until this point and she probably at least ought to try, but when he looks up at her with a wide, bright smile and tugs her into his lap, she’s not going to refuse. She’s starting to get the feeling that Jack has a thing about her wearing his clothes, which is unexpected, but certainly not unpleasant. She has a thing about him not wearing his, so it probably all works out for the best. 

They don’t speak, there’s not so much to talk about when they’ve spent the past three days so closely twined together, but Katherine is content to just sip at her coffee and feel Jack’s chest rising and falling against her side. He’s leaned back in the kitchen chair and she’s slung her bare legs over him, resting her head in that crook of his neck that she’s claimed as her own. She breathes him in, strength and ink and just a little bit of her perfume buried there somewhere, and thinks _mine_.

They stay like that, throwing the occasional glance out of the kitchen window. It isn’t much of a view, looking out toward the high brick wall which separates the back of their house from the neighbours’, but Jack had knocked some nails into the chipped mortar and hung birdfeeders which appear to be quite the hit with the local wildlife. There are, of course, plenty of New York’s inescapable pigeons, but there are also smaller birds, robins and blue tits and song thrushes. They’re running low on bird seed already. The thought of helping Jack fill them, doing something so wonderfully domestic, makes something warm rise her chest.

And then there’s a knock on the door. Katherine looks up, surprised, and looks to Jack, her eyes questioning. He shrugs back. Normally, the appearance of random newsies on the doorstep wouldn’t faze her in the slightest, she’s long ago resigned herself to the fact that Jack is a package deal with his brothers, but she knows for a fact that he had threatened the boys that the two of them weren’t to be disturbed for at least a week, on pain of death. The past three days have clued her in as to why, but the boys don’t disobey Jack. It just doesn’t happen. So who the hell is at the door.

Jack eases her off his lap and she scurries upstairs to try and get dressed and make herself vaguely presentable as Jack pads toward the door. Of the two of them, he’s definitely the one more kitted out for answering the door, in trousers and undershirt and suspenders and socks. If it wasn’t for the fact that her husband’s hair (which is unruly normally, never mind after three very, ahem, _active_ days in bed) has very clearly had her fingers running through it, he might even look presentable. _Oh well,_ Katherine thinks, taking the stairs two at a time, _if that’s the only indication of recent activities, we’re doing pretty well._

Meanwhile, Jack opens the door to, frankly, the last two people he was ever expecting to see. Mainly because he has no idea who they are. One of them is an elderly woman, of probably around seventy, and the other is middle-aged somewhere, around forty. The younger one has a kindly face and ruddy, round cheeks, and she’s holding the most delicious smelling pie that Jack has ever had the privilege of smelling.

“Ah, you must be Mr. Kelly! I’m Mrs. Chavers and this is my mother, Mrs. Ross. We live just next-door and heard that you’d recently moved in so we just thought that we’d pop round with some housewarming bits and introduce ourselves.”

“Mornin’.” Jack manages, then clears his throat of sleep when he realises quite how gruff he sounds. “I- uh, please come in, ladies, that’s real nice o’ you.”

The women need little encouragement, marching straight past Jack and in the hallway and into the kitchen, setting the pie in the middle of the table, the lean of which has been rectified by stuffing a pile of old newspapers under the offending table leg. Katherine has told Jack more than once already that they need to do something about it. She doesn’t seem to be buying his excuse that the newspapers _add character_. ( _Character is something I want in my fiction, Jack, not in my kitchen._ )

Jack isn’t exactly sure of the protocol for having guests round, as the nearest thing to it he’s ever done is had the newsies round to his apartment. Somehow, he doesn’t think that their standards are representative (Is it warm? Yes. Does it have food? Yes. Then they’ll be there.), so he offers the women coffee. That’s clearly the right thing to do, because they both gladly accept mugs and, without prompting, migrate to the living room to ensconce themselves in the armchairs there.

And then, just as Jack’s starting to flounder, Katherine appears in the doorway, a little rumpled with an enormous woollen cardigan over her skirt and blouse and hair just a little askew, but decidedly more presentable than when Jack last saw her.

Katherine, of course, is in her element, introducing herself to the women and beginning small talk, tugging Jack down onto the sofa beside her.

She’s forgone her corset, Jack realises, which is the reason for her enormous cardigan despite the heat, as it’s difficult for her to lace up without his help. It’s distracting. Because now he knows what she looks like without it, and she looks even better then than with it on (and she looks damned good with it on, he would hasten to add). He shakes his head. They’re in company. Still, can he really be blamed? He is, after all, nineteen and newly married to the woman of his dreams. He’s allowed to be a little distracted, surely.

“Thank you so much for the pie, it was really too kind of you.” Katherine smiles sweetly even as she jabs her elbow into Jack’s side, at which point he promptly realises that he’s been staring at her for a solid thirty seconds.

“Oh, you’re very welcome, dear;” says Mrs. Ross, settling herself in the armchair, and her daughter has to bite her lip to stop herself from pointing out that it’s all very well and good her mother saying _you’re welcome_ when all the old woman had done was sit and watch _her_ make it and criticise her apple-stewing technique, “we know what it’s like in your first home. How long have you been moved in?”

“Three days?” Katherine looks to Jack for affirmation. “Four?” He nods. He’s pretty sure it’s four. Honestly, it’s all just been a thoroughly pleasant blur of talking, sleeping, and, well, not sleeping.

“And you’re recently married?”

“Sunday jus’ gone.” Jack confirms, grinning and twining his fingers with Katherine’s to hold up her hand, displaying the delicate gold band on her ring finger that matches the wider one on his own.

Men, at least in Jack’s world, especially those who do manual labour like the dockyard workers, don’t usually wear wedding rings, instead investing in something like a pocket watch. Katherine, however, had insisted. Jack doesn’t exactly mind. Sure, it’s probably the most expensive thing he’s ever owned, but there’s something grounding about it, down-to-earth. He finds himself rubbing his thumb across the warm metal when he starts to feel jittery, when he wants to run or hide or punch something.

Katherine tells them about their jobs at the papers and Jack’s thankful for it, feeling a little bit out of his depth, adding in little jokes whenever he can think of something witty to say. He doesn’t have to do it often though, because Katherine’s just so damn charming. So, Jack sits there, listening to her talk, and realises that listening to Katherine is maybe one of his favourite things in the world to do. And if when the cardigan slips off her shoulder with a particularly animated gesture, he reaches over and tucks it back up where it’s supposed to be, meeting her eyes with a small smile as he does so, then who can really blame him? Frankly, he’s proud of himself for not just melting into the couch at the smile she gives him in return.

“Ah, so they’re your friends, are they?” Mrs. Chavers asks, turning to Jack, and he has to try and pick up the thread of conversation. “I must admit, we were starting to wonder who all those boys coming and going into the house were!”

“Oh, yeah,” Jack chuckles, stuffing his hand in his already unkempt hair, “they’s my responsibility, I’s afraid. They’s been helpin’ me fix up the place.”

“I must say, you’ve done a very nice job.” Mrs. Ross says, looking the living room over approvingly.

Jack almost falls off the sofa. Nice? They think that the house is nice? With its mismatched cushions and bare floors and second-hand furniture? Well, sure, _he_ thinks it’s nice, but he’s spent half his life sleeping outdoors, so he hasn’t exactly got high standards. And he’s sure, even though she’s never said anything, that Katherine must be disappointed in their little home, with its lack of servants and fancy furniture. She wouldn’t ever say anything, to spare his feelings, but it still makes his chest hurt when he thinks about how little he has to offer her.

“He didn’t do a half bad job, did he?” She lays her hand on his knee, giving it a little squeeze.

“Well, Ace, you did do the paintin’ in here.” He grins. “You oughta get the credit, I think.”

Katherine raises her eyebrows, a smile playing on her lips. “Joint effort?”

“I’ll take it.”

…

“It’s scandalous.” Mrs. Ross exclaims, later, over the dinner table, following in the time-honoured tradition of mothers-in-law aggravating their sons-in-law. “You should hear the noises coming from their bedroom!”

Mr. Chavers, to his credit, keeps quiet and continues chewing over his pork chops. His wife resists the urge to roll her eyes, instead sending her husband a significant look. It would surprise exactly neither of them to discover that Mrs. Ross had her ear pressed to a glass against the wall that separates the two houses every night to hear the specific noises she’s referring to.

“They’re newlyweds;” Mrs. Chavers says mildly, dabbing at the corners of her mouth with a napkin and regretting immensely the decision to ask her mother to accompany her earlier that day; the poor Kellys will doubtless be the talk of the street at this rate, “let them enjoy each other.”

“They’re certainly doing that;” Mrs. Ross says, and Mr. Chavers can’t quite work out whether she’s gleeful or appalled, “they’re like rabbits, every hour of the day and night-”

“I think it’s sweet.” His wife states, directing a firm glare at her mother. Mr. Chavers is a little disappointed. He’d thought, for a moment, that the presence of these new offenders might have removed his mother-in-law’s scrutinising gaze from his own actions. No such luck. “He looks at her like she’s hung the moon.”


	43. Chapter 43

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jack has a panic attack in this chapter. He also says fuck a lot. Just so you know.

Marriage, Jack decides, is the best decision he’s ever made. It takes him exactly twelve days before he screws it up.

The thing is, he’s really, really enjoying the whole being married thing, even now the honeymoon is officially over. They both go back to work, though now that Katherine’s got an eye on his comings and goings, for substantially less hours, before returning to their little house to dance around one another as they cook dinner in the kitchen and then intertwine themselves on the couch for Jack to draw and Katherine to write, or her to read aloud while he listens, his hand stroking through her hair. Within days, it’s become routine, usually with one or other of the newsies turning up on their doorstep for dinner or just to talk or to sleep on their couch overnight, or Davey bringing Jack union paperwork to fill out. Jack has never been happier. Neither has Katherine.

Jack should have known, though, that it was too good to last. He evades the nightmares for the first twelve nights that he has Katherine in his arms. Thirteen, it turns out, is his unlucky number. On the thirteenth night of their marriage, Jack wakes up screaming.

He’s been running, or trying to, his heart pounding, the pumping of his own blood so loud in his ears that he can hardly hear his own screaming, blood, blood in his mouth, is he missing a tooth, blood on his stomach, some of that blood pouring out of him, though, the pain excruciating, his skin, burning, burning in a way that makes him want to scratch it off, to flay himself alive, because that’s what he’s doing, Snyder, he wants Jack skinned, or at least he’s doing a pretty good job of it, because Jack feels like he hardly has any skin left, stripping it away, the whip, the belt, the fucking cane, fucking cold, it is, water, the water’s cold, and his head is under it and he can’t breathe, he can’t fucking breathe-

A hand on him. There’s a hand on him, on his arm. Oh fuck, there’s a hand on him. Hands hurt, fists hurt, the room is dark, why is the room dark? Why is it spinning? Skin burning, hands shaking, someone’s fucking hand on him.

Jack does what he always does when he’s scared. He runs away. Except his legs aren’t working, not properly, they’re tangled in something, or somebody has hold of him, but either way, his legs aren’t working and before he hits the floor something sharp hits him just next to his right eye and yes, he’s definitely going to die. _Can’t even run away properly. Fucking idiot._

Somehow, he’s in a corner. Corners are good, sometimes. It gives people less places to hit you. But you also can’t run away when you’re in a corner. Well, he’s in it now, no going back, not when they’re chasing him, not when he’s running. _Cover your head, Kelly, cover your head._ Arms up, curled over his head.

“Jack?”

That’s his name, isn’t it? Though they never used it, not in the Refuge. He was Kelly, there. Or something worse.

“Jack? You’re scaring me.”

Katherine. That’s her name. He doesn’t want to scare Katherine. No. Don’t scare Katherine. He lowers his arms, eyes searching in the dim light. He doesn’t want to scare Katherine.

“Sorry.”

It’s pathetic, _he’s_ pathetic, but most other words aren’t exactly within reach right now. Normally they’re clear in his head, the words, even though they aren’t on paper, but tonight they’re like they are in the newsprint, all shifting around and jumbled up and topsy turvy. He wants to grab hold of them, make them stop moving, but every time he reaches out they just slip between his fingers.

There’s a sigh. He hopes it’s relief, not annoyance, not anger. He doesn’t think he can deal with anger right now.

“That’s okay, my love, you’re okay.”

He doesn’t feel very okay, but if Katherine’s saying it, then it must be true, right? She looks like an angel in that nightgown in the darkness of the room – their bedroom, he realises. Jack always thought she was one.

“Can – can I touch you? I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

Jack doesn’t think he has the energy to say anything, not when everything he’s got is going into the trembling that his limbs have decided to start doing, so he just nods his head and hopes that that’s enough. Katherine seems to think so, because she comes towards him. She approaches him like someone does a wild animal, and that nearly sets him off again because she’s _afraid of him_ and he’s a fucking idiot. He flinches when she touches him, but her fingers are gentle as they pry his hands away from his face and tilt his head to look at the place where he’s bleeding. Jack’s vision has gone funny in one eye, but he doesn’t want to ask whether it’s real and he’s got blood in his eye or if it’s just his brain screwing him over again.

“We need to get you cleaned up, my love. Do you think you can make it down to the kitchen?”

That’s a lot of words, so it takes Jack a minute to process. If he’s being totally honest, he doesn’t think that he can make it down to the kitchen. His limbs feel heavy and useless, like they belong to somebody else, and his head _hurts_. Everything hurts. But he can’t say that, because Katherine will think that he’s weak, then. So, he nods.

“Okay. Come on then.” She sounds relieved, which means that he’s said the right thing. Jack’s pretty sure that knowledge is the only thing that persuades his feet to carry him down to the kitchen. Katherine looks at him like he’s some sort of swooning maiden who’s about to fall into a dead faint, so Jack straightens his shoulders and makes it down the stairs before collapsing into a kitchen chair and leaning his head back, eyes closed.

He can hear Katherine rummaging around in the cupboards, trying to find where they keep the bandages and the rubbing alcohol. Jack wonders whether you can drink rubbing alcohol. Being drunk sounds rather attractive at this exact moment. That said, he isn’t exactly sure that his shaky hands would be able to get a glass to his lips without spilling half of whatever is inside, so maybe it’s best to avoid that altogether.

It stings when Katherine cleans the cut, but she says that it doesn’t need stitches, so that’s nice. Jack fucking hates stitches. He figures, now that his mind is marginally clearer, that he must have smacked his face on the bedside table when he tumbled out of bed. _Pathetic._

“Done.” Katherine says, giving a final press of the handkerchief to his eye and rising to put the supplies back in the cupboard. “So, do you want to tell me what all that was about?”

 _Fuck._ She’s going to hate him. She’s going to think that he’s weak. Why does he have to be so fucking pathetic?

“Nightmare.” He says, and his voice sounds like it’s being spoken through a throat lined with shards of broken glass.

“You want to talk about it?”

“Not really.”

“Okay.” And, well, he wasn’t expecting her to agree to that so readily. “What do I need to do next time?”

“Whaddaya mean?” Jack blinks, feeling slow and stupid.

“How do I help? Next time it happens.” Katherine says, as if it’s obvious.

Hell, how is he supposed to know that? He barely understands how to get through these… episodes himself, never mind knows enough about them to explain to her how to help him. And that’s even saying that he needs help, which he categorically doesn’t, as much as he wants to bury his face in her shoulder and sob right at this moment in time.

“Oh. Uh, not much you can do. Jus’ don’ touch me straight after.”

“Ah.” She winces. “Is that what set you off? I’m sorry. I should have thought on, it’s just that… well, it was a bit of a shock.”

“Sorry.” What else is there to say?

“Don’t be.” Katherine says, quiet and fierce, wandering back to him and looking him up and down, assessing. “Are you alright to be touched again now?” Jack nods.

“Come on then, let’s get you back to bed.”

…

“Good morning.” Katherine says, when he blinks open his eyes, half gummed shut with sleep. “How are you feeling?” As she asks, she reaches up and presses the back of her head to his forehead, as if searching for a fever, then brushes his hair back off his forehead. Jack closes his eyes again, revels in her touch, in the way that her fingers are gentle and don’t want to hurt him.

“Yeah, alright.” That’s a bald-faced lie. Jack feels like shit. He wants to sleep some more, for a week, preferably, or maybe forever. He opens his eyes again. “You want breakfast?”

“Are you offering to make it? Yes, please.” She laughs, light and airy, and it’s difficult to stay so completely downtrodden when she sounds that happy with him. Maybe, if he makes breakfast, if he’s really, really great today, then she’ll forget about the shitshow that was last night. He sits up, swings his legs out of bed.

“An’ what can I get for the lady today?” Jack asks, with lightness that he decidedly doesn’t feel, turning back to press a kiss to her forehead before he stands.

“Coffee.” Katherine hums, stretching languorously beneath the sheets.

Sometimes, Jack can’t quite believe that this is his life, in a house that he owns, Katherine in his bed, nothing better to do on a Saturday morning than make his wife coffee.

“As if I’d risk comin’ near you ‘fore you’s had your mornin’ coffee.”

“Rude.” She pouts, then adds, thoughtful: “Have we got bacon?”

“Think so.”

“Bacon sandwiches?” Katherine shoots him a hopeful glance as he shrugs on his shirt, the material almost transparent in the golden light of summer morning that filters in through the gap between the curtains.

“Comin’ right up.”

They do have bacon in the icebox, it turns out, so Jack stokes the fire and sets the bacon to sizzle in the pan, slicing bread as he stares out of the kitchen window. The birds have come back to the feeders, long-tailed tits this morning. Their backyard is still a mess, other than the bird feeders, with weeds growing up between the flags, but he reckons with a bit of work he can get it right. He’s really just glad that they got the inside of the house looking something like homely before they moved in. Jack makes two bacon sandwiches (because Katherine will say that she wants one, but actually she wants two) and takes them back upstairs along with the mugs of coffee.

The feeling of walking back into their bedroom and seeing Katherine sprawled across their bed (because you can tell that she’s not used to sharing one by her inability to sleep neatly on her own side, Jack swears) in her nightgown, hair braided to keep it out of her way while she sleeps and tied with a little ribbon; that feeling still hasn’t gotten old. Jack doesn’t know why every time he comes in there’s a little part of him that thinks she’ll be gone, that this was all just a dream, but if it is a dream then he never wants to wake up. It’s almost enough to make him forget about last night. Almost.

“Where’s yours?” She frowns, as he hands her the plate.

“Had ‘em downstairs.” Jack replies, nonchalant, easing himself back into bed beside her. Eating, after a night like the last one? Not usually a good idea. Katherine, apparently, didn’t get that memo, as she merely gives him a disbelieving look and then plonks one of her sandwiches in his lap. “Kath-“

“Eat it, or you’re the one washing the grease out of the bedsheets.” Jack frowns, but obeys, taking a reluctant bite and praying that he’ll be able to keep it down. This is not the hill he wants to die on. “I have an article to finish this morning, but maybe we could go for a walk this afternoon? Before Davey comes over?” Katherine suggests, sipping at her coffee.

“Sure.”

And, to be fair, the walk does him more good than he expects. Katherine seems to be taking her cues from him as to how they’re going to deal with the whole big mess that is his screwed-up head, and that is just fine by him. If he ignores it, then it goes away. Until the next night, at least.

So, they hold hands as they walk through the park, and Jack lets himself be soothed by the sound of her voice as she tells him about the piece that she’s writing for the Sun about under-fed schoolchildren in the rural areas outside of the city. And then she breaks off, swearing under her breath in a way he’s never heard her do.

“We live in a city of three and a half million people, how the hell do we keep running into her?” Jack follows her line of sight and spots Rose. His heart sinks even as his muscles tense.

“‘Cos this is a posh folks’ park?” He mutters.

“It’s not a posh people park.” Katherine frowns up at him.

Jack glances around. The trees are planted in neat rows, lining the immaculately maintained paths which weave their way around lawns. Lawns that have blades of grass that are all trimmed to exactly the same length and have _fountains_ in the middle of them. He resists the urge to laugh. He’d never have been seen dead in a place like this before Katherine.

“‘S _so_ a posh folks’ park.”

His wife doesn’t have time to retort, because Rose has noticed them and is hurrying over, the frilled edge of her parasol fluttering in the late summer breeze.

“Katherine.”

“Rose.”

“You look well. Marriage becomes you.” The other woman nods. Katherine doesn’t reply. “I wish to apologise. I was… less than tactful at our last meeting.”

Jack snorts quietly and Rose’s eyes, hurt and concerned, flick to him over Katherine’s shoulder. The fact that Katherine doesn’t elbow Jack in the ribs for his indiscretion betrays just how angry she really is.

“I didn’t mean…” Rose pauses, shaking her head, “my husband believes that I should remove myself from your acquaintance, but I do not wish to. May I be so bold as to request your new address, so that I can call on you?”

Rose’s face pales when Katherine gives her the address, but she doesn’t say anything. Katherine’s almost disappointed at the lack of postcode politics as her friend – former friend? acquaintance? – walks away.

“Did I do the right thing?” Katherine asks, turning to Jack. “Giving her a second chance?”

Jack wants to say no. There are few things, to him, that can strike a person out of his life completely, but making Katherine cry is one of them. But he’s made Katherine cry himself, occasionally, and whilst it’s something he’ll never forgive himself for, it’s enough to make him reconsider his answer.

“I dunno, Ace. D’you think you did?”

She bites her lip. “I think so.”

“Then you did the right thing. You’s got pretty damn good judgement when it comes to people. Else you wouldn’t o’ married me.”

She does elbow him in the ribs for that, though he’s not wrong about it.

…

Katherine’s been teaching Jack a lot about the etiquette of having people over to the house, over the past week or so. All of that goes out the window when Davey arrives for dinner, because the first words out of Jack’s mouth are:

“Dave – what the hell?”

On the doorstep is one Davey Jacobs, with several sheaves of paper clutched to his chest and one hell of a shiner on his right eye.

“It’s nothin’.” David shakes his head, plastering on a smile as he steps inside, dutifully wiping his feet on the doormat. “I brought union paperwork for us to fill out, I need your signatures on some stuff for the newsies.”

“You’s got a black eye.” Jack says.

“Really?” Davey shoots Jack a derisive look over his shoulder as they troop into the kitchen. “I thought a facemask would fix these undereye circles right up.”

“Don’ gimme that, what happened? Do I need to soak someone for you?”

“This,” Davey points at Jack, hefting the paperwork onto the kitchen table, “ _this_ is why we’re not talking about this.”

“What? Why?” Jack throws his hands up, halfway between surrender and irritation.

“Because violence isn’t the answer.”

Jack rolls his eyes. “Exhibit A, the strike.”

“Was won by you negotiatin’ with Pulitzer, not the time we turned over the wagons. That ended poorly, if you recall.”

One thing is for sure, David Jacobs is going to make one hell of a lawyer. Jack Kelly, on the other hand, knows when he’s beaten. He will never win an argument with Davey. He knows this. Therefore, he elects to slump into a kitchen chair opposite his friend and level him with a concerned look.

“Davey, seriously.”

Davey shrugs a little pulling off his jacket and draping it neatly over the back of his chair. “I’m not very popular at law school.”

“Wait,” Jack says, his fingers tightening on the table edge, his nails turning white, “one o’ the toffs at the university did this?”

“James Rawlings didn’t like that I beat him in the first test.” Davey scrunches his nose, licking the pads of his fingers to more easily flick through the stacks of papers, searching and sifting for the particular page he needs. When Jack doesn’t answer, he glances up. “I’m used to this stuff, really-“

“I’ll kill him.” The words are spoken in such a low growl that they’re almost inaudible, but Davey hears them. He hears them loud and clear.

“Jack-“ Davey sighs.

It’s no use. Jack’s chair scrapes backwards across the floorboards as he stands, fists clenched. “I’ll bloody well kill him.”

Davey thanks his lucky stars that Katherine chooses that moment to clatter down the stairs and walk into the kitchen. “Katherine,” he sighs, by way of greeting, “control your husband please.”

“What’s happened?” She asks, laying a hand on Jack’s shoulder and gently pushing him back down into his seat.

“A fellow student and I had an altercation and I came out rather worse off. Jack would like to return the favour.”

“How’s you not bothered by this?” Jack snaps, his fist hitting the table.

“Why are you _so_ bothered by this?”

“Because you’s family, Davey, an’ ain’t nobody hurts family.”

And, well, what to say to that? What is there to say? David certainly doesn’t know, and Katherine neither, and maybe it’s everything, and maybe it’s nothing at all. Jack closes his eyes and breathes out through his nose, nostrils flaring, jaw clenched. He’s aware, perfectly aware, that he’s got an almighty temper on him, when the mood strikes, but the anger isn’t for Davey. Jack focuses on Katherine’s hand, it’s still on his shoulder, her thumb stroking slow circles in the notch below his shoulder blade.

“I promise, Jack,” Davey says, quiet, soothing, unbearably so, as if he thinks Jack’s some sort of bomb about to explode, “I can handle it.”

“You’ll tell me?” Jack hisses, through gritted teeth. On the stove, steam escapes from the kettle. “‘F he gives you any more trouble?”

“Yeah.” David nods, slow, handing a piece of paper across the table to him. “Now, I need you to sign this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Question: am I posting chapters too frequently? I update dependent on when a chapter is edited, (which at the moment is pretty often) but if you'd rather I drag it out more then I totally totally can. I don't want to be spamming you. And, as I've said before, please let me know if you get fed up of this story.


	44. Chapter 44

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There’s a pretty nasty anti-Semitic slur used in this one. Don’t worry, the character who says it gets what’s coming to him.

It’s difficult, Jack discovers, to disentangle himself from his wife (and no, the excitement of being able to call Katherine that has decidedly not worn off yet) while still letting her sleep. It doesn’t take her long to drop off, luckily, but she does so cuddled close to him, nuzzling her face into the crook of his neck and throwing one of her legs over both of his. It’s like sharing a bed with a barnacle. The thing is, he doesn’t usually mind sharing a bed with this particular barnacle, except for the fact that he really, really doesn’t want to wake her up with any more of his pathetic screams. Thus begins his attempt to slither his way out of their bed without waking her. Honestly, he’s quite impressed with himself when he manages it, padding softly down the stairs to the landing and then hopping over the creaky floorboard at the top of the other stairs to head for the living room.

Their couch isn’t the most uncomfortable place he’s ever slept, that prize would have to go to the bench in Central Park he slept on one December when he couldn’t afford to stay at the lodgehouse. However, it’s not exactly what you’d call comfortable. It’s too short for him to stretch out properly, his long legs dangling off the end and his neck awkwardly cricked against the sofa arm, but he can deal with it. And if he wakes up at three in the morning shaking and screaming, then that’s okay, because he hasn’t woken Katherine.

Katherine actually wakes up at their normal Sunday morning time of eight o’clock, rather rudely, she might add, because the alarm clock is on Jack’s side of the bed. She goes to elbow him to turn it off, except her elbow meets with nothing but sheets and empty air, and so she rolls over and turns it off herself. And then she realises how strange this is. The bed feels wrong without Jack in it, too large, too cool, exposed somehow, without his arms wrapped around her in a little haven that’s just hers.

She’s relieved, then, when she creaks down the stairs and into the kitchen, to see Jack there, half dressed in his trousers and undershirt, with a mug of coffee set on the table dangerously close to his elbow considering that he has his sketchbook out, bent over it.

She isn’t scared of him leaving, she’s long ago processed the fact that Santa Fe isn’t what he wants anymore, but still. It’s nice to see him, solid and here. Wandering over, she shifts his coffee mug away from his elbow (because he will definitely knock it over if she doesn’t) and presses a kiss to his cheek. Still absorbed in his drawing, he hums a good morning, trailing the fingers of his right hand, free from holding a pencil, down her arm, skimming over soft skin and downy hair.

There’s still coffee in the pot, so she pours herself a mug and leans against the sideboard, sipping it as she watches him, hunched over, the tip of his tongue poking out the corner of his mouth in concentration as he sketches. It’s adorable.

“I missed you in bed this morning.” Katherine remarks, taking a sip of coffee.

“Yeah?” Jack looks up.

 _Of course_ that gets his attention. Katherine forgets sometimes, with all of the responsibilities that fall on Jack’s shoulders, that he, like her, is just nineteen. And, well, he’s a nineteen-year-old boy. She knows exactly how to push his buttons.

“The bed feels too big without you in it.”

Jack grins at that, setting down his pencil and standing up to wrap his arms around her waist. “Well, I’s sure we can fix that, Ace.”

Katherine sets her coffee cup down on the side, fully prepared for it to sit there, going cold, for the remainder of the morning. She looks up at him, a smirk on her lips.

“You missed your chance, Kelly. We have church to get ready for.”

He groans, but then, a wicked glint in his eyes, says: “In church they tells you to submit to your husband. I’d quite like you to submit now, please.”

Katherine’s quite glad that Jack has lowered his head to start mouthing at her neck, just so that he doesn’t see the amused twist of her lips. “And they also tell you to honour your wife.”

“I’s honourin’ you right now.” Jack mumbles against her skin, and, honestly, she can’t really disagree, not when the sound of his voice, dark and sweet like treacle, sends vibrations through every inch of her.

“Church, Jack!” She gives the back of his head a gentle, affectionate smack. “I don’t want to go to heaven and find that you’re not there with me because you’d rather stay in bed than go to church.”

“I feel like I’s in heaven when I’s wi’ you.”

She rolls her eyes. “Did Romeo teach you that one?”

Jack pauses in his work on her collarbone, glancing up at her. “Could you not talk ‘bout Romeo when I’s tryna seduce you, sweetheart?”

“He did, didn’t he?” Katherine crows, earning another very pointed look from Jack. “Trying to seduce me, huh?”

“Pretty sure I’s succeedin’.” He grins.

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

With that, Jack grabs her and throws her over his shoulder with all the delicacy that would be afforded to a sack of potatoes (except he is quite gentle with this particular sack of potatoes). She squeaks at that and feels him laugh, the trembling in his shoulders, so reaches down and pinches his side. Despite that, they’re both laughing by the time they get to the top of the stairs.

They end up sneaking into a pew at the back of the church halfway through the second hymn of the service, slightly rumpled and giggling like schoolchildren. It’s totally, one hundred percent worth it.

…

The halls of residence for New York University School of Law are surprisingly easy to find, considering that Jack has never been in this particular area of Lower Manhattan before. The particular ones that a Mr. Rawlings is staying at, according to a very reliable directory (according to Miss Rhodes, earlier that day, at least) are clearly for the very wealthy. They’re made of stone, big blocks of it, with arched entrances and some sort of footman or porter or such who sits behind a curving desk. It’s him who looks up and smiles at Jack when he walks in.

“Good evening, sir. How may I help you?”

“Good evenin’.” Jack returns the man’s smile, wandering over to the desk and leaning against it. “I’s lookin’ for a Mista James Rawlings. Any chance you knows where he is?”

“Mr. Rawlings usually returns from his final classes around half-past five, sir. If you go along that passage to your right, outside the building, you’re almost sure to meet him. May I take a name, in case you miss him?”

“Nah,” Jack smiles pleasantly, stuffing his hands in his trouser pockets as he backs away from the desk, “he’ll know who it is.”

The passageway the porter referred to is not difficult to find. Jack only has to hang about in the entrance to it for around five minutes before a group of four or five young men, around his age, the picture of high-class mirth in their smiles and neatly pressed suits, round the corner. Jack pushes off the wall he’s been leaning against, approaching them and calling out.

“One o’ you a Mista Rawlings?”

Confused glances are exchanged before one of the men steps forward. He’s blond, about Jack’s height, clearly athletic. The kind of boy who would be into boxing, except that it’s clear he’s never had a broken nose in his life. Jack’s pretty sure they can remedy that real quick.

“That would be me.” The man says, eyebrow quirking. Jack’s eyes flick to his companions.

“Mind if I has a private word?”

Rawlings looks taken aback, but jerks his head in permission for his little entourage to continue. “Gentlemen, please go on without me.” Both of them watch as the other men shuffle away, somewhat subdued, until they’ve rounded the end of the passageway and disappeared from view. Then the man turns back to Jack. “Yes, Mr…?”

Jack doesn’t bother to dignify the man’s question with an answer. Better, despite what he may have said to the porter, to stay anonymous in affairs like this. You never know.

“I’s heard you ain’t be bein’ over friendly wi’ some o’ your fellow students.” Jack says, his hard tone at odds with the casual set of his body, one hand stuffed in his pocket, the other dangling lazily by his side. “Beatin’ on some o’ ‘em.”

Realisation, closely followed by amusement, dawns across Rawlings’ face. “I presume you’re referring to that kike some of us sorted out last week.”

“You,” Jack says, “can call him by his fuckin’ name. Or didja not even bother to find that out ‘fore you soaked him?”

As he does, he shoves the man up against the alley wall, blond head hitting stone with a painful thud, Jack’s hand, large and calloused, pinning him to the wall by his neck. Rawlings’ eyes bulge, terror, anger, something there that Jack can’t quite pin down, and then the other man’s foot connects with his side, the one where he was stabbed almost a year ago, and though the wound is long since healed, those ribs remember what it was like to be broken. Jack finds himself on the gravel, hands scraped up and bleeding, fire at his side.

“My apologies,” Rawlings sneers, in a voice hoarse from the pressure at his throat, stepping right up to Jack, looming over him, foot coming back to aim another kick at him, “ _David Jacobs._ He’s certainly drawn attention to himself. Teacher’s pet, that one is, can see it from a mile off. That said, it’s hard not to see him coming with a nose that size-“

Jack grabs hold of the man’s foot, yanking his legs out from under him and pinning the man to the ground. They tussle for a second or two, Jack struggling to get a grip on the slimy devil as the gravel embedded in his palms burns, bright and sharp like stars behind his eyelids. And then he’s got him, bloody hand fisted in blond hair, a knee against his spine, and yanks the man’s head up to speak his threats directly into his ear.

“Such a shame your nose ain’t goin’ to be so pretty no more, huh? Now listen here. You leaves David Jacobs alone from now on, an’ you makes sure your friends do too. Got it?”

When Rawlings doesn’t answer, Jack tugs his head further up, bending the man’s neck further backwards. One twitch of his hand, and he could snap it. He won’t, but he could. With a whimper, Rawlings attempts a nod, the movement spreading fire across his scalp. Jack nods, satisfied, then makes good on his promise, slamming the man’s face into the ground with a sickening crack.

He gets up, walks home. If he’s lucky, he won’t even be late for dinner.

Honestly, he’s expecting Katherine to ask why he’s late when he walks in the door, but, in fact, he gets something rather better than that, which is her darting out of the living room to twine her arms around his neck and press a _very_ affectionate kiss to his lips. When she pulls away, he looks a little bit dazed.

“Hello, Mr. Kelly.” She giggles at his expression, fingers going to his throat to loosen his tie.

“Well,” Jack coughs, trying to regain something like composure, “‘s a nice welcome.”

“What do you expect when you leave my breakfast ready for me before you go out to work, hm?”

Jack has to suppress a wince. If he’d woken up in bed with her, there’s no chance that her breakfast would have been made and on the table, but he’s sneaking out of bed again and had woken up this morning with a crick in his neck from sleeping on the sofa. He misses it, her face being the first thing he sees when he wakes up, but there’s no sense in tormenting the both of them with his nightmares.

She looks so damn happy about her breakfast being left ready on the table before he’d headed out to work though, smiling up at him like that, her hands popping the top two buttons of his shirt, a relief after a long day.

“I’ll hafta start doin’ that more often.” He grins, then flinches as his gravel and blood encrusted hand brushes against her.

Katherine, sharp as a tack, as always, even after a full day out chasing stories, doesn’t miss it, snatching up his hand. “What’ve you done to your hand?”

Jack’s normally quick off the mark with his lies; he’s had to be, growing up on the streets. With that kind of childhood, you learn to lie fast and you learn to lie well. Katherine, though? She’s thoroughly disarming, almost impossible to lie to. In a way, he’s kind of glad of that, though, as he’s pretty sure if he did ever lie to her then the guilt would eat him alive.

She frowns at him, her tone accusatory. “Jack.”

He caves. Jack lets her lead him into the kitchen and pick the tiny shards of gravel out with tweezers, lets her bathe his hand and douse it in rubbing alcohol, all the while listening to his story of what exactly he’d been doing after work. She waits until he’s done before she comments.

“Did it occur to you that this might make things worse for David?”

She doesn’t look up, engrossed in pinning the bandage around his hand. It’s hard to process her question when she’s holding his hand like this, which is stupid, Jack knows, he’s touched far more of her than her hand, now, but it’s true. The way that she’s cradling his hand in hers, his so much larger, hers so much gentler, it makes it hard for him to breathe, never mind think.

“O’ course it ain’t goin’ to make things worse.” Jack finally pulls himself together enough to answer. “They knows now that he’s got boys to back him up, that’s all.”

She sighs. “At school - it doesn’t work like the newsies do. There’s… politics.”

And that? That’s just uncalled for, really. “Oh, an’ o’ course I ain’t goin’ to understand, ‘cos I’s too stupid to go to school.” He regrets the words as soon as they’re out of his mouth. Why can’t he just keep his mouth shut?

“I didn’t say that, don’t put words in my mouth.” Katherine says, giving him a look, tight-lipped and frowning. “I’m just saying that next time, maybe you should listen to what Davey wants.” She secures the safety pin, returning the first aid supplies to the box and letting go of his hand. “There, done.”

Jack feels something sick twist in his stomach. He’s an idiot. He shouldn’t have snapped like that. He just hates it when she brings it up, the thousands of miles that stretch between them across their little kitchen. At the age of ten, Katherine was being given lessons by a governess in a schoolroom, learning French. When Jack was ten, he was living on the streets and could barely read English.

Katherine stands up to put the medicine box away, but Jack’s hand on her forearm stops her in her tracks. He looks up at her eyes wide, lips wet, a little pleading. “You mad at me, Ace?”

“No, Jack,” she sighs, setting the box back down on the table and stepping into his space, allowing him to wrap his arms around her waist as she cradles his head against her stomach, “I’m not mad at you.”

 _I’m not mad at you, but I was worried. I’m not mad at you, but I can’t stand you being injured. I’m not mad at you, but what if next time it’s more than a scrape. I’m not mad at you, but I can’t lose you._ She doesn’t say any of things, doesn’t suppose she really needs to. Her voice, when she speaks, is quiet and fierce.

“But as your wife, don’t you ever make me clean you up after a fight again.”

He mumbles an apology against her stomach, breath warm even through the fabric of her dress. Jack doesn’t say sorry if he doesn’t mean it, she knows, and he’s suffered enough, really, so she bends to press a kiss to the top of his head, that dark, unruly hair of his ghosting across her face.

“As Davey’s friend,” Katherine levels a look at him, stepping away to put away the box, “I hope that you knocked half his teeth out.”

Jack barks out a laugh, shaking his head. How the hell he got so lucky; he’ll never know. “I guess I’s just lost all o’ the brownie points I earned this mornin’, huh?”

“Not quite.” Katherine smiles at him, leaning against the kitchen counter.

“Oh?” Jack’s eyebrows rise in interest, pupils widening, and he eases himself to his feet.

“You’ve got a few left.” She smiles at him, wandering over and pressing a feathery kiss to his jawline, before whispering: “Also, I may have burned our dinner, so I was hoping to distract you.”

Jack pulls away a little, looking down at her. “How bad?”

Katherine internally cringes. This is not the kind of humiliation she needs today. If she didn’t know that Jack would be so damn nice about it, she wouldn’t even show him, but, as it is, she turns to get the stew out of the oven. And, wow, Jack hasn’t ever seen anybody decimate leftovers quite that badly. Upon closer inspection, which reveals bones, meat, and various unidentifiable vegetables (a feat in and of itself, seeing as this stew consists purely of leftovers from yesterday’s roast) cremated at the bottom of the cookpot, he discerns that his wife – beautiful, smart, independent, terrible cook – has forgotten one rather important element of stew: the stock.

Jack turns back to see a very red-faced Katherine peeking out at him from between her fingers. He chuckles, spreading his arms wide.

“Distract away.”


	45. Chapter 45

Saturday fast becomes the day on which the Kelly household turns into a gathering place for newsies. They turn up at all times of day, with very little rhyme or reason, but the door to the house, whilst Jack and Katherine are in, at least, remains perpetually unlocked. The boys know that they’re always welcome, even when Jack is out and there’s only Katherine there to offer them coffee. On the third Saturday of their marriage, therefore, Jack is less than surprised to be woken by Crutchie wandering into his living room.

“Trouble in paradise?” Crutchie asks, eyebrows raised, as he eases himself into the armchair.

His eyes rove over the rather dishevelled and disgruntled form of one Jack Kelly, who is stretched out – at least, as much as is physically possible on this hellscape of a sofa – at seven on a Saturday morning and has clearly been there all night, judging by the way that he’s half hanging off it and has his arm flopped over his eyes.

Jack grunts, sitting up and rolling the stiffness out of his shoulders. “Havin’ nightmares. Don’ wanta wake her.”

“What you sleepin’ down here for?” Crutchie wrinkles his nose. “‘S screamin’ once a night, max. Dead easy to get back to sleep from – I should know.”

If anybody should, Jack knows, it’s Crutchie. They slept in that penthouse together for years. Still, he shrugs. _I don’t want her to think I’m weak_ probably isn’t an advisable answer.

“You’s a nitwit, ‘s what you is.” Crutchie tells him, matter-of-fact.

“Shuddup.” Jack rolls his shoulders again, standing up and wandering toward the kitchen. “Toast?”

“When don’ I want toast?”

 _Ask a silly question._ Crutchie gets up from the armchair with some difficulty, due to the stuffing inside it being softened and spread out from years of use, manoeuvring his crutch around awkwardly until he can hop after Jack into the kitchen. Jack doesn’t offer to help, much as he wants to. His new job seems to have exacerbated Crutchie’s independence complex and Jack isn’t about to mortally offend the kid at seven am on a Saturday morning. He has better things to do, like getting the toast started, leaving Crutchie with nothing to do but collapse into a kitchen chair and listen to the bread sizzling in the pan.

It’s only as Jack picks up the pan off the stove, ready to slide the toast onto Crutchie’s plate, when Katherine wanders in, unexpected. She has this peculiar talent, that rather disturbs Jack, honestly, of descending the stairs completely soundlessly. More than once he’s turned around to find her unexpectedly in the same room as him when he’s thought that she’s upstairs, only to jump out of his skin.

“Jack, my love – oh!” Her eyes widen as she yanks the loose, sage green dressing gown tighter around her, face turning pink. “Crutchie, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know you were here, I’ll go and get dressed-“

“Kath, you’s in a dressin’ gown, you’s fine. Sit. Have toast.” Jack says, thoroughly unperturbed.

“Jack, I’m not wearing _stockings_.” She hisses.

“An’ so far as I can remember you ain’t got no hideously deformed toes as you needs to hide.” Jack replies, pushing a slice of toast onto a second plate and thrusting it into her hands. “Crutchie don’ care. Do you, Crutch?”

Crutchie looks up from his seat at the table and looks at Katherine for the first time. “Nah.” He swallows down an enormous mouthful of toast. “You’s got very pretty feet.”

She can’t help but laugh at that, her reluctance draining away as she sits down with her toast. “Ah, Crutchie, the compliment every girl wants to hear.” 

Her mother, Katherine knows, would be scandalised if she could see her now. In nightdress and dressing-gown, without stockings or corset, sitting in the kitchen in broad daylight with two men (only one of which is her husband). Her father truly would call her a slut for this. She bites into the toast rather more viciously than she entirely intends.

Jack, however, seems to notice the change in her demeanour as he puts down the pan and wanders over to drape himself over the back of her chair, pressing a kiss her cheek. She smells like the butter from the toast and that lavender soap that she uses to wash herself every morning and, sweetly, intoxicatingly, a little bit like him. Instinctive, she reaches up and takes hold of his arm to wrap it around her middle. It’s become practiced, this, even after only a few weeks, the way that her body knows his, twines around him. Not touching him feels like a loss, like there’s some part of her missing. Jack is comfort, grounding, books and mugs of tea on a rainy Tuesday afternoon.

Race takes that moment to walk in, rolling his eyes when he sees them.

“D’you two ever keep your hands to yourselves?” He asks, swiping the second slice of toast of Crutchie’s plate as he saunters over to the opposite chair.

Katherine blushes, looking down at her own breakfast, but Jack just laughs over Crutchie’s indignant protests and stands back up. He doesn’t quite let go of her, though, one hand resting lightly on her shoulder, the other one on the chair back, not quite ready to abandon their closeness.

“Nah. Mrs. Ross from next-door told me the other day that I oughta be less affectionate wi’ my wife.”

Katherine hides her face in her hands, knowing _exactly_ where this story is going. To be fair, when Jack had repeated this conversation to her, they’d both thought it was hilarious, doubled over laughing in the bathroom, struggling not to let toothpaste escape onto the floor as they did so. Still, it’s one thing for them to laugh about it when they’re brushing their teeth, Jack behind her, one arm around her waist, eyes meeting hers and twinkling in the mirror, and quite another for him to air it to the boys.

She tilts her head back to look up at him, and he catches her eye, raising one eyebrow almost imperceptibly, seeking her permission to continue. Blushing, she gives him a little nod, and he returns, grinning, to his story.

“So,” Jack says, fully getting into the story, Crutchie and Race’s eyes on him, riveted, as they always are when he gets like this, the bright eyed dreamer, “I asks Mr. Chavers ‘bout it, an’ he gets all shuffly an’ uncomfortable, like, an’ he says that his mother-in-law is complainin’ ‘bout all the _affectionate noises_ comin’ from our bedroom.”

“And that’s my cue to go and get dressed.” Katherine declares over Race’s cackling and Crutchie’s red-faced huffs of laughter, wolfing down the last of her toast before scurrying upstairs.

She gets halfway up the stairs before she remembers that she still wears a ladies’ corset, not a working woman’s one, and so she’s really going to need Jack’s help to tighten it, and has to do the walk of shame back into the kitchen to get Jack.

When she walks back into the kitchen, Jack’s laughing at something that Race has said, leaning against the counter, framed with the window behind him, pale sunlight throwing him into shades of late summer, the last glimmers of August glory dimmed by September. How she ever got so lucky is completely and utterly beyond her.

“Jack, my love.” He looks up at that, sees her stood in the doorway, and smiles like he’s watching the sun rise. “I need your help with my corset.”

It’s become fairly commonplace, now, Jack growing used to the ritual of helping her to get dressed in the morning, so he just nods and tosses the tea-towel that he’s holding over his shoulder, making to follow her. The other two, however, well. All colour drains from Crutchie’s face, while Race bursts into laughter, attempting a wolf-whistle before breaking off into giggles. Jack scrunches up the tea-towel and throws it at Race’s head. Katherine ought to feel uncomfortable, she knows – such conversation certainly wouldn’t have been permitted in the Pulitzer house, that’s for sure. At age five, she had once made reference to her drawers at the dinner table and been promptly expelled from the dining room. But… these are her boys and this is their way. So, instead she fixes Race with a sarcastic look.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Race, is that you volunteering to help instead?”

And, well, that certainly shuts him up.

Katherine is immensely glad, half an hour later, when there’s a knock on the door and she can answer it, fully dressed, because there, on the doorstep, is Rose, fiddling with a dainty little handbag and sporting a hat so large Katherine isn’t sure that she’ll be able to make it through their front door. The woman mumbles something about whether it’s inconvenient timing, but Katherine jumps in, reassuring her and then inviting her in. There’s raucous laughter coming from the kitchen and there’s a moment when Katherine wonders if she’s done the right thing, not putting Rose off until another day, but then shakes the thought away. No, Rose was the one who was unsatisfied in all of this. Crutchie and Race are better friends than she’ll ever be, so if Rose wants to be friends with her, then she’ll just have to deal with the newsies as well.

“Coffee?” Katherine asks, leading her into the little kitchen, where Jack is leant against the sideboard once again, whilst Race and Crutchie lounge at the kitchen table. She motions for Rose to join them. Rose’s eyes go wide, but she obeys, perching on the very edge of the wooden chair.

Of all of them, rather unsurprisingly, Jack recovers first.

“Rose!” He offers her a smile, albeit a tight one. “‘S nice to see you again. These are my brothers, Crutchie and Race.”

“What… unusual names.”

“‘S jus’ nicknames.” Crutchie smiles, sticking out a hand across the table. “I’s Charles, ‘f you wants the proper version, an’ this is Edward. You must be one o’ Kath’s friends?”

“Yes.” Rose looks at Crutchie’s slightly grubby hand nervously, but, after a moment of hesitation, shakes it all the same. “Nice to meet you.”

“I’s surprised you didn’t meet us at the weddin’.” Crutchie says, his tone light, and Katherine almost drops the coffee pot.

“I… wasn’t able to make the wedding.”

Race narrows his eyes. “You ain’t one o’ those old cows who rejected the invite, was you?”

“So!” Katherine turns on her heel, a little coffee slopping over the rim of the mug as she brings it over to the table. “Is there something in particular that brings you round, Rose?”

“Oh, not really. I just wanted to make sure that the offer of friendship still stood, you know.” She pauses, silence, then looks around, her eyes catching on chipped plates and newspapers stacked under a table leg, lines appearing on her smooth, porcelain skin. “Your new house is very nice.”

“The boys did a good job.”

“Are you going to Cornelia and Darcy’s wedding?”

Oh. She’s known they’re engaged, of course, but she hasn’t fully processed that, not really. That Darcy, her oldest friend, has tossed her away so easily… it was bound to sting a little, but she didn’t think she would care so much. She’s known for a long time of his disapproval, but assumed it was disapproval like Ralph’s, disapproval that would prioritise her, their love for her, over any umbrage they took against her life choices. But, no. She’d amused him, for a while, and then when she’d become tiresome, or inflammatory, or dangerous, he’d tossed her to the curb, like yesterday’s paper.

“We haven’t been invited.”

“Oh.” Rose, to her credit, clearly hadn’t known, by the way she bites her lip. Jack still wants to kick her out of his house though, just for the look that comment put on his wife’s face. “Maybe she’s forgotten. We haven’t seen you in a while.”

“An’ whose fault is that?” Race mutters. Jack cuffs him upside the head. Rose ploughs on.

“I’m hosting an afternoon tea next Saturday, you ought to come.” She forces lightness into her tone. “Perhaps it will jog Cornelia’s memory.”

Katherine frowns. “Won’t your husband mind?”

“He’s out for the day.”

Rose’s answer is too quick and they all know it. Rose has planned this, oh-so-carefully, to get exactly what she wants without the consequences. She wants Katherine, but not for her husband to know that she’s carrying on the friendship with someone so unsuitable. Her words colour Katherine’s cheeks in pink shame.

“I see.” Katherine presses her lips together. “Thank you for the invitation. I’ll think about it. We quite often have guests around on weekends, as you can see.”

“Oh, of course.” Silence. A cough. “Well, I really ought to be going.”

Rose stands. Her mug, on the table, is still half-full of coffee.

When Katherine re-enters the kitchen after showing Rose to the door, Jack immediately strides across the floor and pulls her into an enormous hug. He’s so much bigger than she is, a fact that she forgets sometimes, when he’s so gentle, but she’s grateful for it now, that he can completely envelop her. She presses her nose against his undershirt, breathing him in. He smells like ink and paint and little bit of sweat, but she doesn’t mind. She knows him, could take him apart and put him back together with her eyes closed, knows the way his sweat tastes on his skin and the places that undo him. He’s hers.

“Are you goin’ to go?” Crutchie asks, his voice quiet, and she pulls away to look at him.

“I don’t know. Probably.”

“Ace,” Jack sighs, “‘s your decision, but you always comes back feelin’ worse off. Maybe ‘s time to let it go.”

“I know. I just… want some friends that are just mine, you know?”

“What you on about?” Race frowns. “We ain’t jus’ here for Jack, y’know.”

“Yeah,” Crutchie pipes up, grinning at Jack, “you think we comes here to look at his ugly mug?”

“‘Ey!”

Jack’s protest goes unacknowledged as Race gets up and yanks Katherine into another hug, Jack moving backwards, testament to how much he trusts Race in the way that he passes her over without complaint.

“You’s our friend too, Princess.” Race says, squishing her against him. “You’s one o’ us – King o’ New York, an’ all that.”

…

“Read to me?” Jack asks, from where he’s slumped in the armchair, the last of the newsies having finally trooped out of their door.

Katherine hums her assent, his request quite expected at this point, plucking a book from the little shelf he’s put up for her by the fireplace. “I’ve got a new one from the library.”

When she turns back, he’s got his arms open, waiting for her. It’s become custom somehow, despite the fact that they have a perfectly serviceable and substantially larger sofa less than three feet away, for Katherine to curl up in the armchair with him. They’ve got it down to a fine art, now, Jack with his legs stretched out straight, Katherine’s flung over his lap, his arm around her, maybe a hand coming up to play with her hair as she tucks herself into the place where his neck meets his shoulder, resting against the lean muscle of his chest. They fit together like jigsaw pieces. Intertwined, braided together at their ends. Katherine clears her throat, starts to read.

_“Among other public buildings in a certain town, which for many reasons it will be prudent to refrain from mentioning, and to which I will assign no fictitious name…”_

She continues, her voice soft, melodic. Jack’s fingers pull the pins from her hair, easing it down out of its style and into its natural state. He loves her as her society self, put together and pinned, professional, but he loves her even better like this, in half-undone clothes and loose hair, pen or fingers flying across the page. When its down, he brings his other hand over, surrounding her completely in his arms, and begins, absent-mindedly, to braid it.

_“…Oliver cried lustily. If he could have known that he was an orphan, left to the tender mercies of churchwardens and overseers, perhaps he would have cried the louder.”_

“He woulda.” Jack says.

He speaks without thinking and seems to realise it immediately, shooting her an apologetic look for his interruption. Katherine allows the book to fall shut, cover weighing against the fingertip that marks their page, numbing it a little. Perhaps this had been a poor choice of novel. The last thing she wants is Jack thinking about his own childhood when he’s been so happy today.

“Since when do you know how to braid hair?” She asks, quiet, fingering the little section of hair he’s been at work on, glossy and neat.

Jack smiles at her, rueful. “Full o’ surprises, me.”

“I’m serious.”

He sighs, leans his head back, closes his eyes as if in pain. “We used to have a girl newsie, Emma. Too young to sort her own hair out, so I did it for her; me an’ the boys used to sneak her into the lodgehouse – she weren’t allowed to be there, ‘cos ‘s only for boys an’ all that.”

A hand cups Jack’s face, pulls him in for a kiss. His eyelids flicker, it’s unexpected, but not unwelcome, his mouth covering hers, eyes closing, relishing, blissful.

“You’re wonderful.” Katherine finally whispers, against his mouth, resting their foreheads together, her thumb ghosting along his cheekbone. “What happened to her?”

He swallows, heavy, hurting. “Got carted off to prison for solicitin’.”

“What?” Katherine’s eyes fly open. Jack’s stay closed. The braid begins to unbraid itself, no longer held by either of their fingers.

“Yeah. ‘Pparently a man forcin’ hisself on her was her fault for solicitin’.” He clears his throat. “You should carry on.”

So she does, she carries on reading, worrying yet more at each sentence about the memories this must be dredging up, watching the knit of her husband’s eyebrows, noticing when his fingers stutter in their paths to comb through her hair.

_“…‘Please, sir, I want some more.’_

_The master was a fat, healthy man; but he turned very pale. He gazed in stupefied astonishment on the small rebel for some seconds, and then clung for support to the copper. The assistants were paralysed with wonder; the boys with fear._

_‘What!’ said the master at length, in a faint voice._

_‘Please, sir,’ replied Oliver, ‘I want some more.’_

_The master aimed a blow at Oliver’s head with the ladle; pinioned him in his arms; and shrieked aloud for the beadle.”_

Katherine can’t take it, slamming the book shut. “Am… am I making you sad? With this book?”

Jack just blinks at her. “No, Ace. I’s lived worse.”

“That doesn’t mean it isn’t making you sad.”

He shrugs. “‘S a novel, ain’t it? Oliver’s goin’ to get a happy endin’. Gotta find out what happens in the meantime.”

“How do you know Oliver’s going to get a happy ending?” She frowns, searching his eyes for something, hope, an answer, perhaps.

He looks up at her, lips pink from her kisses, his eyes dark. “I did.”


	46. Chapter 46

“Jack.”

Jack isn’t expecting to see David Jacobs waiting outside of his office on Monday evening, but he certainly isn’t complaining about it. He’s hardly seen his friend since the term started at the law school, professors immediately piling on work the likes of which Jack wouldn’t be able to figure out if it came with a step-by-step how-to guide. Which it decidedly doesn’t. Which is why David Jacobs is currently spending the vast majority of his time in the university library, rather than standing outside the offices of the Wall Street Journal.

“Davey!”

“Is there a reason that James Rawlings is walkin’ around with a bandaged nose and is crossin’ to the other side of the street whenever he sees me?”

 _Oh, shit. Sharp as a tack, that kid._ Jack blinks, widens his eyes, tries out a buttery smile that he hopes vaguely resembles Crutchie’s. “Who’s James Rawlings?”

Davey narrows his eyes, having absolutely none of it. Still, he falls into step beside Jack, wandering in the direction of his house. “I ought to be annoyed at you, you know. I can fight my own battles.”

“Never said you couldn’t.”

(He totally couldn’t. Sure, the kid threw a few punches during the strike, but Jack would put money on David losing a fistfight within the first minute. And he isn’t a gambling man.)

They’re silent for a moment. Jack wonders if this is it, if this is how he finally screws it all up. He always manages it, somehow, to push people away. Maybe there’s something broken in him, something deep-down wrong about him. Maybe that judge had been right, all those years ago, when he used that word, what was it? _Atavistic._ He’d asked what it meant, that word, as they carted him off to the Refuge. They’d said it meant he was a good-for-nothing, a juvenile delinquent, a rotten piece of shit that would never amount to anything. And he’s tried, hasn’t he, to prove them wrong? But there’s always something – the nightmares, the violence, always something. If you’re rotten on the inside, then it’ll eventually show on the outside, won’t it?

Davey finally looks over at him. Smiles a little. “Thank you.” _Oh._

“You’s welcome.” Jack says, real quiet, staring down at his boots. Then, looking back up, asks: “You wanta come for dinner? Mrs. Chavers from next-door brought cottage pie round last night, so there’s no danger o’ you gettin’ poisoned by Kath’s cookin’.”

“Her cookin’ isn’t that bad.” Davey rolls his eyes.

“Says the man who ain’t married to her.” Jack mutters, then, under Davey’s disbelieving gaze, relents. “It ain’t that bad, you’s right. She’s jus’ got a real talent for burnin’ stuff.”

Davey snorts. “Non-burned cottage pie sounds lovely.”

Mrs. Chavers’ cottage pie, it turns out, borders on heavenly. Katherine even manages to warm it up in the oven without burning it. Walking into the Kelly house, Davey realises, is a little bit like walking into a synagogue or a church. The air inside of such places is always thick, heavy with the prayer that’s been prayed, a warm blanket of atmosphere. The Kelly house is similar. There’s something there in every floorboard, every insulation fibre in the walls, care, perhaps, or love, not just that of Jack and Katherine, but the newsies that gather at all hours too. It takes him walking in to realise just how much he craves it.

Davey wants this. He wants neighbours that bring him pies and a wife who can warm them up and house that feels like long overdue embrace. He wants this life, this domesticity, and whilst he never thought he’d be jealous of Jack Kelly (as much as he admires him), he finds that the green eyed monster has wormed its way inside of his heart after all.

It only gets worse when Katherine asks him about law school.

“It’s alright,” Davey says, swallowing a mouthful of pie, “a lot of work, though. At least James Rawlings is leavin’ me alone now.”

Both he and Katherine turn their gazes to Jack, who suddenly decides that the portion Katherine has given him definitely isn’t enough and that the answer is quite clearly to sidle over to the kitchen counter to get seconds. Katherine clucks her tongue at her husband, turning back to David.

“Is there anybody in your classes that you like?” Katherine presses.

“There’s Miriam, I suppose.”

“Miriam?” Jack turns around, wandering back to the table with a second helping of cottage pie. “‘S a girl’s name.”

“His parents were dreadfully cruel.” David deadpans. “She _is_ a girl, Jack.”

“They lets girls into law school?” Jack asks around a mouthful of pie.

Davey wrinkles his nose, suppressing a _that’s disgusting_ comment. Katherine, it seems, is less concerned about Jack’s table manners than his sexism, turning a severe glare upon him and raising her eyebrows.

“Why shouldn’t they?”

“I ain’t sayin’ nothin’ ‘bout their brains, cool it.” Jack says, sitting back and raising his hands in the air. “I jus’ ain’t never heard o’ no lady lawyers.”

“Well, you hadn’t heard of any lady reporters writing the hard news and here you are married to one.” Katherine frowns, but there’s no real malice in her words as she turns back to David. “Go on, Davey.”

David turns a little bit red. Any interaction with Jack and Katherine is always an adventure, but he wasn’t expecting an interrogation. Frankly, he won’t be surprised if Katherine produces a large lamp to shine into his eyes.

“She, uh, she’s in my employment law class.” The tips of his ears turn a little bit pink. “Usually sits in front of me in the lecture theatre. I gave her some paper last week when she forgot her notebook.”

Jack whistles under his breath, a shit-eating grin spreading across his face. David suppresses a groan. “Wow, Davey-boy, really puttin’ the moves on her – ow! Whassat for?” Jack rubs at his arm where Katherine’s leaned over and smacked him.

“Stop it, you.” The admonishment is somewhat mitigated by the unbridled affection in her tone. Katherine turns back to David, raising her eyebrows. “That’s lovely. Why don’t you ask to see her outside of class?”

And, well, why doesn’t he? No, no, that’s a stupid idea. The worst possible idea, in fact. The last thing he needs is more fuel for people at law school to hate him, and looking like he’s trying to court one of only three women in his year group is a sure-fire way to make himself public enemy number one. As safe as he feels with Jack backing him up, Davey really doesn’t want another black eye. Besides, Miriam is pretty and intelligent. The only time she’s ever so much as looked at him is when she asked him for that paper.

“That seems… forward.”

Katherine shrugs. “Worst thing she can do is say no.”

Good grief, it’d be even worse if she said no. “That seems pretty bad.”

“She ain’t gonna say no to you, Dave.” Jack says, continuing to eat. For the second time that evening, both David and Katherine turn incredulous eyes to him. “What?” He shrugs. “You’s handsome, clever, hard-workin’ – hell, you can even be funny when you tries hard enough. You’s a catch.”

Katherine full-on beams at her husband and turns back to David, nodding enthusiastically. He gulps. Of all the people that he was expecting a pep talk from, _Jack_? Well, not top of his list, he’ll admit. But, then again, despite all his snarky comments, Jack has never been anything other than supportive.

“‘Sides,” Jack stands up, collecting the plates, and grins, “who’s goin’ to say no to a guy who lends ‘em _paper_?”

That’s more like it. Jack continues to rib him about Miriam all evening and it’s so comfortable, so well-intentioned, that Davey doesn’t even care. Eventually, however, conversation dips into a silence, the three of them stretched out in the living room as the embers of the fire in the grate start to dim. He glances at the clock.

“You been practicin’ with the numbers at all?” Jack’s jaw tightens at his words and David instantly realises that he’s screwed up. Really, really badly.

“Numbers?” Katherine asks, looking between the two of them from her position stretched out on the couch, her legs slung over Jack’s lap.

David’s eyes go wide. “Oh.”

“‘S nothin’, Kath.” Jack waves his hand, dismissive, but he doesn’t look at her, doesn’t quite meet her eyes.

“You haven’t told her?” Davey asks, incredulous. Sure, he’d used Katherine’s thoughts on the matter against Jack to get him to agree at the start, but… oh good lord, has he caused this? _Do you really want Katherine to know that you don’t know your numbers?_ No wonder the newsies call him the ‘walking mouth’ – he doesn’t know when to keep the damn thing shut.

“I’s _tellin’ you_ to shut the hell up.” Jack replies, his tone hard and dark, fixing Davey with a stare which pins him to the back of his armchair like a preserved butterfly to corkboard. _Stay there_ , it seems to say, _and shut up._

“Jack Kelly, what haven’t you told me?”

Katherine yanks her legs off his lap, tucking herself into the opposite end of the sofa. _Numbers. What does Davey mean, numbers?_ Katherine bites her lip. What if it’s financial? They’re fine, surely. Her mother’s words come back to her, even though they’ve long since burned away – _men of his class are too quick to fritter away their pay on drink and bets._ No. She pushes the thought away. It will be something completely innocent. Jack wouldn’t do that; she knows him.

Still, it’s difficult to know what to do when he’s looking at her like that, eyes pleading for her just to drop it, looking like she’s abandoned him when he’s only at the other end of the sofa.

“I – I have studyin’. Yeah.” Davey shoots to his feet and nods, a little manic. “Important law studyin’. Thanks for dinner.”

Jack looks up at him, completely done. It’s like the kid doesn’t understand how to be a fucking human being, coming out with something like that and then just upping and leaving. Still, he closes his eyes, breathes in deep, and reopens them. This is just Davey. Now he has to deal with the consequences.

“Thanks for comin’, Davey. You know where we are, ‘f you need anythin’.” Jack claps him on the arm. Probably a little harder than he ought to, but still, it’s friendly.

“Thank you for coming, Davey.” Katherine says, getting up to walk him to the door, shooting a fierce look over her shoulder at her husband, letting him know perfectly well that he is in for it when she returns. “Don’t be a stranger.”

By the time Katherine returns from showing Davey out, Jack has slipped into the kitchen and is standing with his back to her, scrubbing the plates in the sink with considerable vigour.

“Dinner was lovely,” he declares, his voice light, not turning around to look at her, “we should thank Mrs. Chavers-“

“Jack.”

In the sudsy water, his hands still. He drops his head, breathing deeply, chin pressed to his chest. “Let’s not do this, Ace.”

She folds her arms across her chest, still stood in the doorway to the kitchen where she’s paused. It feels wrong, somehow, to walk in. Like if she does so then Jack might break. He’s clearly pretty close already. “You’re keeping secrets.”

“I ain’t keepin’ secrets,” Jack sighs, still not looking at her, bracing his wet hands on the edge of the sink and gripping it, white knuckled, “I jus’ wants a little privacy-“

Why won’t he bloody well look at her? Katherine wants to stamp her feet, shout, hit him, something, force him to acknowledge her. She needs to see his eyes, angry or sad or worried may they be, needs to know that these ‘numbers’ aren’t any one of the terrible things running through her head right now. Every thought feels like a betrayal, because this is Jack, her Jack, and he’s good and kind and loyal and would never do anything to hurt her, so why is she even still worried about this? But she is.

So, she interrupts him, goading him, trying desperately to get a proper reaction out of him. “Davey clearly thought I should know.”

Jack laughs, bitter and biting. “Davey does a lotta thinkin’.”

“Unlike you, clearly.”

Jack freezes. _Finally._ Finally, she might have got through to him. And then his words come out, and she realises that she’s managed nothing at all. “‘Scuse me?”

She’s too far gone, now. “Well, you clearly aren’t thinking very hard if you’re keeping things from me-“

“I can think jus’ as well as you, thank you very much.”

“Jack, stop being stupid-“

“ _Stupid?_ ”

Katherine winces. _Too far._ She never thought that Jack would be the kind of person to be hurt by words, when she first met him, but she’s slowly realising that beneath the front that he presents to the world, he takes each and every word to heart. Especially hers. She opens her mouth, ready to do damage control, but he continues.

“I’ll ruddy well show you stupid.” Jack turns around and yanks open a cupboard with such force that Katherine’s surprised that he doesn’t rip the blasted thing right off its hinges. He reaches in, right to the back, and yanks out a large box, slamming it onto their kitchen table. It rattles as he does so, and something inside shatters. “These are the big bloody secret.”

She peers into the box. “What are these?” Tentatively, she reaches inside and plucks out a graceful clay swan that’s shaped to look like a number two. 

“They’s numbers.” Jack snaps, his face red, though whether from embarrassment or anger she can’t quite tell. “Which Davey made for me, outta clay, ‘cos I’s too _stupid_ to learn them the normal way.”

 _Oh._ She’s known that Jack struggles with reading, what with not having attended school, but not knowing basic maths? Not understanding numbers? She hadn’t realised it was this bad. It’s not _his_ fault, of course, but it explains a lot. She wants to throw her arms around him for going to Davey, proud of him for everything he’s done, that despite everything he’s been through, he’s still here and he’s still trying. But none of that comes out of her mouth, because she trades in words, but Jack steals them right out from under her. No, what she actually says is:

“You don’t know your numbers?”

And that is, categorically, the wrong thing to say. Jack draws that curtain of his around his features again, shuts her out. “No, Katherine, I don’. Stupider than you thought, huh?”

 _Fix it, Katherine, fix it!_ “Jack-“

He shakes his head, turns away from her. “I’s goin’ for a walk-“

“Jack, I-“

He’s out of the door before the words have time to shrivel up in her throat.

Jack realises that he should have picked up his jacket. It’s cold, for September, the last glimmers of summer fast fading away, chased by the setting sun. The sun has disappeared, now, behind a New York skyline that encroaches ever more into the sky with each passing year.

On Sunday, the sermon had been about the tower of Babel, about the people who had built a tower so high that God had struck it down and scattered them, giving them all different languages. Sometimes it feels like that, with Katherine. Like they’re speaking two different languages. Like perhaps this life they’ve built together is too ambitious, precarious, waiting to be struck down by something – by God, by death, by stupidity.

He still doesn’t like Reverend Bates. The man won’t shake his hand as he emerges from the church if Joseph Pulitzer is within eyesight, despite the fact that, at this stage, Pulitzer’s blindness is so bad that the Reverend could shake hands with a sodding zebra and he wouldn’t be able to tell. No, Jack is decidedly not welcome there. He’s aired this, of course, with Katherine, and whilst she has finally accepted that such behaviour towards her husband is neither normal nor acceptable, she’s still harping on about how he’s welcome because he’s loved by God. Jack doesn’t believe her, but he has enough sense to keep his mouth shut about it. He wishes he could give some of that common sense to Davey, who he really could have done with keeping his mouth shut, honestly.

It’s not really Davey’s fault, he knows. He really _ought_ to have told Katherine by now. But what she doesn’t know can’t hurt her, right? ( _Well, that’s clearly not true, Kelly._ ) Marriage has just been so good so far. He doesn’t want her realising what a mistake she’s made quite yet. Surely he gets to have at least a year before that happens, right?

Jack stops on a street corner, breathes. What to do? He certainly isn’t going home anytime soon. He can’t face her. Not when she’s going to look at him like that, all sweet and sympathetic, and then turn away and regret ever choosing him. He considers going to a bar, decides against it. He’s not going to turn into his old man. Still, a bar fight sounds good, right about now. He’d really quite like to punch someone. But he isn’t going to do that, either, because Katherine doesn’t want to patch him up after fights, she’s told him so, and he already disappoints her enough. He can’t bear to do it twice in one day. He runs the pad of his thumb over his wedding ring, allowing the motion to clam him, then sets off walking. Where, he doesn’t quite know.

Jack isn’t entirely sure how long he wanders the streets of New York for, scuffing his boots along dirty pavements, but it’s dark by the time he gets back, the kind of dark that quiets the city. He eases the front door open as quietly as he can and toes off his boots in the darkened hallway, hoping that Katherine isn’t going to be woken by him. All he wants is to make it to the sofa and make it through the night without waking up screaming. And then the hallway light turns on. He blinks, momentarily blinded, then makes out Katherine standing in the doorway, wrapped in her dressing gown and with tear-stained cheeks. He feels like he’s collapsing in on himself.

“Kath, I-“

She cuts him off by drawing him into a hug so fierce that it almost knocks him over and the breath out of him. It’s instinctive, now, the way that he hugs her back, the way that he wraps his arms around her and buries his face in her hair. After a long moment, she pulls away and takes his hand. Jack can feel the warm metal of her wedding ring pressed against his fingers, a promise.

“Come to bed. We’ll talk about it in the morning.”


	47. Chapter 47

_We’ll talk about it in the morning._ Jack stares up at the ceiling, the slight glimmer of streetlights outside their bedroom window just bright enough to illuminate the constellations painted above their heads, white spots in interminable darkness. If you joined them all up, they’d spell out those words. _We’ll talk about it in the morning._ Against his side, Katherine shifts, her breathing slowly evening out as she slips into proper restfulness.

He should go downstairs. Jack knows this. He’ll be able to think more clearly downstairs, when he doesn’t have to worry about accidentally drifting off and then waking Katherine with his nightmares. But he lies there a little longer, because the smell of her, the feel of her, warm and close, comforts and calms him in a way that really ought to terrify him, that she has this much power over him without even trying. _We’ll talk about it in the morning._ She must be really mad. Maybe she’ll ask for an annulment. After all, illiteracy probably counts as a reason for that, right? Maybe she’ll just ask him to keep their marriage in name only. It wouldn’t be ideal, of course, but he thinks that he could live with that. He could deal with most things if they could keep living in the same house, if he gets to see her face every day even if it isn’t filled with love for him. It’s more than he deserves. _We’ll talk about it in the morning._ What the fuck does that even mean?

Sighing, Jack eases his arm out from under her body, slow and careful, before slipping out of bed and down the stairs. In the living room, he lies down on the sofa and stares at a different ceiling, this one without stars, and hopes, in vain, that it might spell out the answer.

At some point, he must fall asleep, because he wakes up an indeterminate amount of time later to hear somebody speaking his name. It’s only the voice, soft, kind, familiar, that keeps him from screaming when he opens his eyes to see a figure looming over him. That guard from the Refuge, Sanderson, he’d done that, loomed over them like that before he beat them. But this figure isn’t as big as Sanderson. _Katherine,_ his half-asleep brain realises, a wash of relief relaxing his muscles, _it’s just Katherine._

“Move over.” She tells him, poking at his side once she sees the recognition in his eyes.

Jack obliges, pressing himself more closely against the back of the sofa so that she can lie down next to him and cuddle into his chest. He doesn’t know exactly what’s going on yet, he never does fully understand the way that Katherine’s brain works, it’s so much more complicated than his, but he likes her feeling of her body when it’s pressed against his so he just wraps his arms around her.

“I know we fought, Jack, but that’s no reason to sleep on the sofa.” She says. He can feel her breath against his collarbone. “Do you want to tell me why I keep waking up to find that you’ve sneaked out of bed to sleep downstairs?”

He’s glad, suddenly, of their position. It means that he can look at the fire, its embers still not quite extinguished, instead of having to look at the disappointment that must be there in her eyes. “Didn’t want to wake you. Nightmares, an’ all.”

Katherine winces. “I know I didn’t handle it well-“

“‘S not that, you handled it fine.” He cuts her off. He’s not having her thinking that it’s her bloody fault. “‘S jus’ no sense in me wakin’ you.”

She jerks away from him, almost falling off the sofa in the process, forcing him to look into her eyes. Katherine takes his face in her hands, stubble prickling her palms. “I love you. I married you because I want you. Not you minus the difficult parts. I’d much rather you stayed in bed and we could work through your nightmares together than you dealing with them on your own down here.”

What had he ever done to deserve somebody like her? “I love you too.”

“Are you going to sleep in bed from now on, then?”

Jack nods, and even that feels like he’s just had an anvil lifted off his chest. He hadn’t quite realised just how much he’s been missing waking up with Katherine in his arms. She wants him in spite of everything. That’s a miracle in itself.

“Good. Now, about the numbers-“

And the anvil drops right back onto his chest. Breathless with the pressure, he squeezes the words out. “I was a jerk, ‘m sorry. I shoulda told you ‘fore we got married, I know it ain’t fair o’ me.”

Katherine frowns. “I’m not angry that you don’t know your numbers, Jack. I’m angry that you didn’t tell me.”

Jack looks down, rubbing his thumb over the band around his ring finger. “Didn’t want you knowin’ I’s stupid.”

“You’re not stupid. I want to know you, Jack.” Katherine rubs her thumbs over his cheekbones, soothing and rhythmic. “We’re in this together; I promised you forever, remember?”

He swallows heavily, then nods.

“Anything else I should know, while we’re sharing, hm?” A smile twitches at her lips. “A body under the floorboards? A skeleton in the closet?”

Jack doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t think that he has enough breath left. “I think I’s told you most stuff. There’s… other stuff. From the Refuge. From my old man.”

“I can wait for you to tell me those things. Until you’re ready. But you have to tell me things like this. I need you to talk to me. Yes?”

“Alright.”

When Katherine wakes up, she’s overheated and a bit squashed, which, she realises, is probably due to the fact that Jack is half on top of her, pressing her down into the couch. It’s vaguely uncomfortable, but she doesn’t want to move him. They’ll have to move soon enough to get ready for work. She wants a few minutes more of this, the pressure of his body against hers, the morning light streaming in through the window, faint noises of horses’ hooves and cheerful voices outside. Katherine truly believes that she could live forever in this moment, here, with Jack. Her Jack. She can’t help it, brings her hand up from where it’s resting against his chest to card her fingers through his hair, mussed from sleep. Amongst the dark curls, her pale fingers stand out, her wedding ring glinting like a buried treasure. Jack. Her diamond in the rough. Or a rough diamond, one of the two. Nightmares and numbers mean nothing anymore. He’s hers, for better or worse, and they’ve stood up and said it before God and their friends and their family, and it’s a promise that she’s never going to break. That she never wants to break.

Her heart, however, does break when Jack wakes up and the first words out of his mouth are:

“Is we… is we okay? You an’ me?”

“Jack, we’re always okay.” She sighs, stroking her hand further in his hair and watching his eyes flutter closed. Sometimes she wonders whether she has a housecat for a husband. “You’re clever and wonderful and I love you. People have rows, remember?”

“Yeah.” Jack murmurs, dropping his head against her side, keening into her touch. “You’s clever an’ wonderful an’ I love you too. I don’ tell you enough.”

“You tell me plenty. Still, I never object to hearing it.”

When she finally pulls her hand away from his hair (if only so that she can press a quick kiss to his lips) he opens his eyes again.

“Breakfast?” _Trust Jack to be thinking about food after a conversation like that._

“I’ll do coffee if you do toast?”

“Deal.”

…

Jack wakes up feeling like he’s drowning every night that week. Katherine, however, is nothing if not a quick learner. She doesn’t touch him until he gathers himself enough to swing his legs over the side of the bed and sit, elbows on knees, head in hands, and take deep breaths to keep himself from throwing up. It’s only then, when his skin has stopped burning and his breaths have evened out into something resembling normality, that she wraps her arms around his middle and presses kisses along the line of his shoulder, up to the back of his neck, coaxing him back to her, back to reality. She lets him wrap her up in himself, their bodies pressed impossibly close, lets him cling to her like a lifeboat until he falls asleep again. They don’t talk about it, not really. Jack doesn’t want to and Katherine doesn’t think she can handle hearing about anything that can make her husband, strong as he is, scream like that. She’d listen, if he needed her to, of course, they both know this, but she’s quietly grateful that she doesn’t have to. They’re here, together, and that’s enough.

The night that leads into Saturday is much the same, except that Katherine doesn’t fall asleep again in Jack’s arms, instead lying there and staring at the stars on the ceiling as if they have the answer to how to approach this tea of Rose’s that afternoon. She focuses on the band that weighs heavy on her finger, runs her other fingers over it, quick swipes of sweat-sheened skin, just enough to reassure her. _No matter what happens_ , she reminds herself, _you have Jack to come home to._ And she’s pretty sure that everything will be alright so long as she has him.

She feels far from sure, however, when she’s trying to figure out what to wear. Katherine has never been one to put much stock in clothing, preferring the practical over the fashionable, but this feels important, somehow, like she’s making a first impression despite her having known these girls for her entire life. It’s like she doesn’t know how to be one of them anymore.

“How do I look in this dress?”

She bursts into the living room. Jack peers at her over his easel. He’s got a new commission going for some rich old lady who desperately wants a portrait of her ugly little dog. Jack had turned his nose up when he’d been sent a photograph of the most hideous pug either of them had ever seen, but they’d both been considerably more amenable to the idea after realising quite how much the cheque was for that had been sent with the photograph.

“I mean,” Jack grins at her, eyes crinkling, a dot of blue paint inexplicably, adorably, having found a home on his cheek, “you looks better without it.”

“Jack!”

She snatches a paint-stained rag off the mantelpiece, because in this house she never seems to be more than three feet from one, and flicks it at his head. Jack ducks neatly, emerging from behind his canvas once again with his grin considerably softened.

“You looks lovely.”

Katherine frowns, looking down at herself in the skirt and blouse combination. It’s simple, most of her clothes are, these days. After a couple of weeks of being moved in, she’d gone through her wardrobe and ditched a good number of her formal dresses, aware that for a life amongst Jack and the newsies, hard-wearing fabrics that are easy to wash and mend are vastly preferable. Still, it makes her feel a little plain.

“You’d tell me I look lovely if I was wearing a potato sack.”

“I would.” Jack agrees. “Don’ mean it ain’t true, though.”

“Ugh.” She scrubs at her face with her hands, rubbing at her eyes, her skin, as if she wants to reveal some high-society self underneath. “Why am I so nervous?”

“No idea, sweetheart. You’s goin’ to be perfect.”

That, Katherine thinks, is a gross overestimation of her abilities. Then again, it’s Jack. She’s pretty sure that he’d follow her into a burning building if she told him that it was safe. So she walks to the Graceton’s house and, pressing her fingers against the warm metal of her wedding ring one last time, she marches up to Rose’s front door and rings the bell, head held high.

It takes her exactly seven minutes to remember why she always despised these things, with the same mundane conversation about dress styles and who is engaged to whom, and the same selection of vile cucumber sandwiches. Katherine can think of few things she hates more than cucumber, and most of them are also present at these teas. Speaking of which, the utter _delight_ that is Cornelia is naturally present, along with Eliza who merely ducked her head when Katherine entered, and a few of Rose’s married friends. Katherine is pretty sure that she’s met some of those women before, but can’t quite pin them down, so smiles politely at all of them and makes a beeline for the cake. Sugar. Sugar is the way through this.

She’s halfway through a slice of really rather exquisite lemon drizzle cake when Rose drops her bombshell and Katherine realises exactly why she’s been invited.

“So, I have news.” She announces, her countenance glowing. The women make excited, tittery noises. “I am with child!”

“Oh, Rose, how wonderful!”

“Congratulations! When are you due?”

And so on the conversation goes. Katherine has to forcibly extract herself from her own thoughts to congratulate Rose. Who will she tell, she wonders, when she conceives? She can’t imagine gathering these women together to tell them. Despite the fact that she certainly doesn’t want children yet, though, and she certainly doesn’t want the kind of fuss that is currently erupting around the tea-table, she can’t help but feel a little envious of Rose. She wonders what it will be like, to have a child that they made, her and Jack, inside of her, in her arms, running around the house. It’s the kind of contentment that makes her breath catch in her throat.

Katherine is pulled out of her daydream by more tittering. One of the women (Katherine is about eighty-six percent sure her name is Frances) leans forward with a conspiratorial smile. “You must feel more content now that your pregnancy has dulled your husband’s urges, at least.”

“Oh, yes, it is such a relief.” Rose giggles. “Roger used to reach for me so often as twice a week, but now that I am with child, several weeks can expire without so much as a sniff of interest.”

More giggles from around the table, the married women nodding knowingly. One of them (and this one Katherine can’t even guess at her name) who has a swollen stomach, her hand resting atop it as if to draw attention to its roundness, nods sagely. “Oh, yes. Before the timetable was frankly alarming – three times a week, if you can believe it.”

 _Three times a week? And they think that a chore?_ Katherine shudders to think of what the rest of their married lives are like. She can’t imagine going so long without that kind of affection now. In the darkness of their bedroom, Jack kisses her like a man praying. Whether that escalates or not, she hardly thinks that she could live without it, the idea of cold sheets between their bodies a repulsive one. These women, with their sordid concerns, the idea of the marital bed as something merely perfunctory, a duty to be done… that repulses her even more.

“What about you, Katherine?” Cornelia turns to Katherine, an affected smile playing across her lips. “You are the newest bride here. How often does your husband make demands of you?”

Katherine takes a long, casual sip of her tea before answering. “Once or twice, usually.”

“Once or twice a week is most reasonable.” Rose nods approvingly, as if such is an appropriate number, as if Katherine has given the correct answer.

Such an action riles her, reminds her of her father’s assessing eyes, and she opens her mouth before she can properly think it through. “I meant once or twice a day.”

Eliza drops her pink-patterned china teacup and it shatters on the floor. Frances (is it Frances? Her surety has dipped to seventy-three percent) breaks into a coughing fit. Katherine rather thinks she’s terrified them. She can only imagine Jack’s face if he was witnessing this right now, the way that his lips would twist as he suppresses his laughter. Such a smile must play across her own face, because Cornelia turns to her, reproving and arch, motioning rather violently for the maid to come and clean up the broken china.

“Come, Katherine.” She snaps, lips pressed tightly together. “Such things are not to be joked about.”

 _That’s rich, considering that you asked me._ “I am not joking.”

“But – but I –“

“Such are love matches, I suppose.” Eliza mutters.

Katherine turns to make her answer, but Rose’s hand covers her own, the woman leaning forward in wide-eyed concern, as if Katherine is some little child requiring careful treatment, protection. “Katherine. Do you need me to ask Roger to talk to your husband?”

 _Oh, good grief._ “Whatever about?”

Rose blinks. “Well, you shouldn’t be expected to –“

“I am not unhappy with the arrangement.” Katherine interrupts, thoroughly tired of this whole debacle. “You merely asked me how often. Was my answer not plain?”

Rose, horror spreading across her face like spilled water across a dainty tablecloth, covers her mouth with her hand. Several of the women around the table follow suit. Seconds pass before Rose opens her mouth to try again and Frances (sixty-seven percent), seeing her friend’s intentions, practically screams:

“Silk!” Six heads snap to face her. She quiets a little, flushing. “I have a new dress coming from Paris. In yellow silk.”

…

Katherine elects to walk home from Rose’s house, rather than taking a carriage. She’s already proved herself to be improper enough today, clearly, what will a little more impropriety do? Her expression remains stormy until she reaches the corner of their street and sees Jack, leaning in the doorway of their house chatting to Mrs. Ross from next door, and the clouds that have fallen in front of her eyes clear away, and it’s really difficult to stay annoyed anymore.

She only gets halfway down the street before Jack spots her, lifting his hand and waving, a stupidly wide grin on her face. It’s thoroughly unladylike, but she lifts her own hand in an equally enthusiastic wave, and quickens her pace, nearing him.

“You know,” Katherine hears Mrs. Ross say as she approaches them, “my daughter has the most terrible taste in men.”

“Oh, Mr. Chavers seems real nice, ma’am.” Jack replies, clearly trying very hard not to laugh.

“Oh no, a dirty man, he is. Leaves his socks in all places around the house. I always say, you can tell everything you need to know about a man from his socks.” Mrs. Ross shakes her head, despairing, completely oblivious to her audience’s amusement. As Katherine starts up the path, the old woman turns her beady gaze on Jack. “ _You_ don’t leave your socks lying around, do you?”

“Wouldn’t dream o’ it.” Jack lies smoothly, reaching out an arm to pull Katherine into his side in a show of easy affection which will, in all likelihood, be reported to the entire street as an shameless expression of animalistic sexuality by the next morning. “Nasty habit, that is.” Katherine pinches Jack’s side to let him know that his little fib hasn’t gone unnoticed. He just grins down at her.

“Good, good.” Mrs. Ross nods approvingly, turning her gaze upon Katherine. “You’ve trained him well.”

“I have.” Katherine smiles. “You’ll have to excuse us, Mrs. Ross, but my husband here must be in dire need of his dinner.”

“Thank you.” Jack chuckles just as soon as the front door is closed, tugging her tighter into their side hug in gratitude for her saving him from that particular conversation (and conversation, here, is defined as mode of torture).

“You’re a filthy liar.” Katherine laughs, pressing him up against the hallway wall and pulling him down to kiss her.

Delighted, Jack grins against her lips. “An’ yet you married me.”

“Your socks are strewn across our bedroom floor –“

“Like your hairpins ain’t on every surface –“

“- and you lied about it to Mrs. Ross! Shame on you, Kelly.” Katherine smacks at his chest, playful, but he catches hold of her hand, chuckling as he twines their fingers together.

“An’ what did you want me to say? _I leaves my socks everywhere, can never find a matchin’ pair. Oh, but here’s your nose back, Mrs. Ross. I’s found it in my business._ ”

She can’t help but snicker at that, even as Jack tugs her into the living room and pulls her down onto the sofa with him. “How was your day?”

“Alright.” Jack shrugs, settling her against him, her back against his chest, stretched out and languid. She hums in contentment, which Jack takes as his cue to continue. “How’d your tea go?”

“Terribly.” She sighs, letting her head fall back onto Jack’s shoulder and closing her eyes. “I scandalised everyone.”

Jack snorts quietly. “Sounds like you. Tell me, what’d you do this time?”

“They were comparing how often they lie with their husbands and –“

“They was _what_?”

“I know, that was my reaction exactly, and they asked me and -” Katherine breaks off, blushing.

“An’ what?” Jack presses, twining his fingers in and out of hers where their hands rest on her stomach, restless and serpentine, in a way that is thoroughly distracting.

Katherine feels embarrassment heat her cheeks. “I assumed everybody lay together as often as we do.”

The noise that Jack makes, behind her, tells her that he, at least, had been under no delusions as to the regularity of other couples’ sex lives. Honestly, she has been finding Mrs. Ross’ reactions to their _affectionate noises_ rather amusing up until now, but now, perhaps, she wonders whether they’re right to be scandalised. And then Jack presses a kiss to the side of her neck, and she decides that if they’re scandalised, then that’s entirely their problem.

“What did you tell them?” Jack murmurs against her skin. She can feel the gravel of his voice shiver through her, buzzing down into her toes.

“The truth. I said once or twice, I meant per day, they thought I meant a week, and now they all think that I’m a slut and that you’re a brute – why are you laughing?” She breaks off, tilting her head to the side to peer up at him.

“‘Cos, I love you.” Jack shakes his head, his chest rumbling with laughter. “‘Specially when you’s traumatisin’ those high-society folks.”


	48. Chapter 48

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have a last bit of fluff. The plot (plot? what plot?) is about to come back. As always, comments make me really happy :)

The following week buries the both of them under mountains of work. They hardly see one another other than to fall into bed together, usually in the small hours of the morning as Jack frantically tries to cope with the plethora of pet portraits he’s suddenly been commissioned with off the back of that stupid little pug and Katherine attempts to get an article past her damn editors despite the fact that she’s rewritten it five times and they still aren’t happy with it and she’s almost certain that they’re trying to give her regular column to Johnson, that idiotic little bloke from the sports division.

Thursday, therefore, is the first time all week Jack has managed to leave the office before eight, churning out the last of the cartoons with Daniel and an obscene amount of coffee. He almost falls over Davey as he leaves the office, bleary-eyed from staring at paper and ink all day.

“Dave?” Jack manages as the other boy shoots to his feet from his seat on the bench by the Wall Street Journal offices.

“I wanted to say sorry.” Davey bites his lip. “About causin’ that fight the other night for you and Kath.”

And Jack honestly has to wrack his brains (or what’s left of them, after this work week) to figure out what the hell his best friend is on about. When he lands on it – _oh, the numbers thing_ – he almost laughs. It’s the truth when he says: “‘S forgotten, Davey. We needed to talk ‘bout it anyways.”

Davey nods, tension draining away and out of his shoulders as he falls into step beside Jack. “Speakin’ o’ girls, you spoken to that girl yet? Miriam?”

The tips of David’s ears turn a little bit red. “I, uh, we’re goin’ to study together. In the library. Next Tuesday.”

Jack shoots him a sideways look, vaguely amused. “You sure knows how to show a girl a good time.”

“We’re just friends.” He says, and Jack thinks that Race would call the expression that David is wearing ‘pissy’.

“Oh, sure.” Jack snorts. “An’ I’s the king o’ England.”

“England has a queen, you idiot.”

“You’s takin’ a girl on a date to the library, I think you’s the idiot here.”

“Katherine would _love_ a date at the library, shut up.”

And Jack can’t argue with that. Damn David Jacobs and his lawyerly ways! Katherine would indeed love a date at the library, though Jack knows that it’s something they’ll never do. (Unless she asks. If she asks, he’ll crumble. Always does. He loves that girl too damn much for his own good.) Books aren’t exactly his thing, as much as he might have tried to pretend with _Romeo & Juliet _when the two of them were just starting out. He loves the stories, of course, he likes little better than when Kath sits and reads to him, but the idea of going into a building specifically set aside for books? Not his thing. Not his thing at all. All of those words for him to squint at, to try so hard to piece together, their print so much smaller than the newspaper headlines? No thank you. But…

“So it is a date!” Jack crows, triumphant. David rolls his eyes.

Jack doesn’t give over ribbing David about his terrible seduction technique ( _I’m not trying to seduce her!_ ) until their paths home diverge and Jack claps him on the shoulder and tells him to call round for dinner whenever he has the time.

As he heads home, now alone, Jack decides he’s having the night off from portrait painting, as most of the commissions aren’t due for another couple of weeks, and spends his walk home debating the best distraction technique to tear his beautiful wife away from her clackety typewriter and into his arms. Despite this day being slightly different from most this week, though, in the aforementioned respects, he doesn’t really think that today is much different from any other day until he walks into his house to find his wife sobbing in the kitchen.

“Kath?” He drops his portfolio case in the kitchen doorway and rushes over. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m fine,” she waves a hand at him and he stops, barely two feet away, hands raised in surrender and completely flummoxed, “I just – I burned it.”

“Burned what?” Jack asks, slowly lowering his hands.

“I was trying to bake you a birthday cake and it’s an awful mess-“

He can’t help it; the laugh bursts from his throat before he can stop it. Now that he looks at her properly, his vision not clouded by abject terror about whatever the hell it is that is making his strong, brave wife cry, he can see that Katherine is covered in enough flour to make at least another two cakes. And there was he, not even having cottoned on to the fact that today is his birthday.

“-it’s not _funny_ , Jack.” She shoots him a glare.

“I’m sorry, I jus’-“ Jack breaks off, chuckling, before schooling his features into something like concern, “I thought somethin’ was really wrong, sweetheart.” He tilts his head to one side, attempting an expression of coaxing interest. “Can I see?”

“Of course you can’t.” Katherine grimaces, slumping against the kitchen sideboard. “My shame is already too much to bear.”

“An’ you calls me dramatic.” Jack snorts, reaching out and taking her flour-covered hand. “C’mon, I bet we can jus’ scrape the burned bits off.”

And, oh, that was the wrong thing to say. That was absolutely the wrong thing to say. Jack knows the look that means that he’s in trouble, and that is, without a doubt, it.

“Seriously?” Katherine scowls. “That’s what you think?”

Yanking her hand out of his grip, she slides her hands into the oven gloves and produces, from inside of their oven, something that can only be described as a charred lump. It’s not even recognisable as cake.

“Oh.” Jack’s eyes widen.

Sticking her chin in the air, Katherine dumps the blackened baking unceremoniously on the table and stares him down. “I’ll get you a knife if you want to _scrape the burned bits off_.”

“Okay.” He winces. “Maybe ‘s a bit worse than I thought.”

And then something he doesn’t expect happens: her eyes fill with tears again. “I’m a terrible wife.”

Bloody hell, doesn’t she know that he can’t stand it when she cries? It’s visceral, somehow, something from back in mankind’s caveman days, Jack is sure, this twist he feels in his gut whenever she’s upset. So he rushes around the table and hugs her.

“You’s a wonderful wife. It was very sweet of you to do this, an’ it’s your first time tryin’ this. My first drawin’s were rubbish.”

“You did your first drawings as a child, Jack.” She mumbles against his chest, but she doesn’t sound quite so upset anymore.

He squeezes her a little tighter. “And you’s only been married a month. It’ll come.”

“Making the cake may also have distracted me from making dinner.”

Jack resists the urge to laugh. Only Katherine. Considering that she’s the smartest person that he knows, he wonders how on earth the thing that defeats her is her inability to follow a recipe.

“C’mon, I’s still got the money from doin’ that paintin’ for Medda last week. We’ll go to Jacobi’s.”

…

This, Katherine has to admit, however begrudgingly, is certainly better than anything she could have cooked, so she pushes down the shame she feels at her culinary/wifely incompetence and tucks into the pie that she’s ordered with some vigour. Unless Jack is planning on cooking tomorrow, this is the best she’s going to eat for a couple of days. She’s glad, too, that Jack doesn’t seem disappointed by the fact that they’ve ended up at Jacobi’s rather than him getting a home cooked meal with birthday cake for dessert, or, at least, if he is disappointed, then she’s grateful that he doesn’t say anything. She knows that she’s a bit useless and doesn’t need reminding of it. It feels even better, therefore, when Jack leans forward and clasps her hand across the table, saying:

“Let’s do this more often.”

“Hm?” She looks up, meets his eyes.

“Go out for an evenin’. Say, once a month.” He sets his drink back on the table, a glass of whisky that he’s been nursing since his finished his meal, only to stuff his free hand into his unbrushed hair and shoot her a nervous smile. “We’s both so busy, Kath. I married you ‘cos I want to spend time wi’ you, not ‘cos I want to collapse into bed at the end o’ the day too tired to speak to you.”

Oh, but her husband is a marvel. “I’d like that.” Katherine smiles, sweet and private, and squeezes his hand in return. “Have I told you that I love you today?”

“Twice.” Jack grins, unbearably smug about it.

“You’re counting?”

He shrugs. “I pays attention when you talk.”

She gasps, a sarcastic smile on her lips. “Somebody get the guy a medal.”

Jack scrunches his nose and tells her, good-naturedly, to _shove off_ , but he doesn’t let go of her hand, his covering hers on the tabletop. Katherine hasn’t finished her meal, taking it slower than Jack – whilst he’s comfortable enough to eat as much as he actually wants in front of her now, she’s still not managed to ease him out of his tendency to scarf his food down at the speed of light – but eating one-handed is a sacrifice that she is perfectly willing to make so that she can keep holding his hand. 

And, bless him, it is nice. They should do this more often. Jack has a talent for asking all of the right questions, getting her talking about her latest article, the one that she’s been forced to rewrite more times than she cares to recall, until her meal is half-forgotten on her plate.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if that editor of mine wasn’t related to Mrs. Ross.” She grouches, finishing an extended rant about the bane of her life (a.k.a. her editor, Mr. Ross). Jack tilts his head to the side, silently questioning. Katherine sighs. “Same last name, same inability to be satisfied, same lascivious interests –“

“Lass-ivi-what-now?”

“Lascivious. It means that he has excessive interest in… you know.” Katherine looks away. She doesn’t know quite how she still feels so shy about it, after everything they’ve done, after everything she told _Rose._

“Oh,” Jack clearly has no such qualms, leaning forward, smirking, as he props his head on his hand, “do I?”

Katherine gives him a look. “Much like you.”

“That hurts, Plumber.” Jack laughs, leaning back in his seat and clapping a hand to his chest.

It’s Katherine’s turn to lean forward, turning their hands over on the tabletop and nodding to them. Her wedding ring is now clearly visible, a dull shine of gold in the low light of the restaurant lamps. “It’s Kelly, now.”

And it is. Kelly feels like a name that’s hers in a way that neither Plumber or Pulitzer ever did. She still writes as Katherine Plumber, of course, attempting to keep hold of the little reputation she’d built up as a journalist prior to their marriage, and she’s just fine with that, with keeping who she really is private, just between her and Jack. Pulitzer was never a name that belonged to her, never a name that she could live up to. Plumber was born of a running away, not a running to a career, but an escape from her father and his long arm across the industry. Kelly? That’s hers. She chose it, was given it, by the man she loves. Katherine’s never felt more like anything than she feels like a Kelly.

“Yeah it is.” Jack grins. “So, la – lascivious? What makes him that?”

“He said, and I quote, _I thought being a bride might have loosened you up a bit._ ” She feels Jack’s reaction as soon as she says it, the way in which his grip on her hand tightens just a little, the way that particular tendon in his neck stands out.

“I’d offer to soak him for you, but I knows you wants to handle this yoursel’.” Jack says, forcing his body to relax and giving her hand a little squeeze, reaching for his whisky. “But, ‘f you ever want him to trip over, like, real hard…”

Katherine smiles. She’s so bloody lucky. “I’ll bear that in mind.”

…

They don’t leave Jacobi’s until Mr. Jacobi himself kicks them out, well after the ten pm closing time he operates on weekdays. They’re both a little bit buzzed, not drunk, just tipsy, something Katherine’s never felt before in company. Her mother always taught her never to drink more than one glass of wine when in public, or risk disgracing herself in some manner, and it’s a rule that Katherine has stuck to for her entire life. Until now, she supposes. But Jack had two glasses of whisky after their dinner, and he was laughing and undone, and his eyes were crinkling at the edges and soft, and when he’d poured her a second glass of wine, and then a third, she didn’t have the heart to say no. And why should she? Jack’s seen her, he knows her, she has nothing to hide from him. And he’s kept some part of her touching some part of him all evening, knees and feet under the table, a hand on the small of her back, her fingers interlocked with his. She’s safe. She’s with Jack, so she’s safe.

The pleasant fizzing in her belly and the giggles in her throat that come with too much good wine burst out of her, though, and, as they start walking back, she takes hold of Jack’s hands and pulls him out into the middle of the street, spreading her arms wide and twirling, before throwing herself into his embrace and starting a clumsy slow dance. Jack cottons on, and then he’s laughing too, spinning her around and cradling her close, smelling of whisky and aftershave and paint.

“This is one of my favourite memories.” She tells him, tucking her head against his shoulder, revelling in the feeling of his hands on her, so much more confident than they used to be, knowing exactly where to hold her, exactly where to touch. He knows her, she realises, as he hums his assent, every part of her, can play her like a violin.

“I fell in love with you, then, y’know.” He murmurs back, voice dark and soft and close to her ear, close enough that he finishes his sentence by pressing his lips to the shell of it.

“You’d told me that you loved me before then.” She squints up at him, the stars that she knows must be behind his head obscured by the glow of the city’s streetlamps.

Jack looks down at her, fond in the way that makes the inside of his chest ache. “Y’think I don’t fall in love wi’ you over again each day?”

Katherine doesn’t know exactly what to say to that, but she thinks that she might just melt if he keeps looking at her like that, so she buries her face in his neck and presses her lips to his jugular, hoping that’s enough to tell him that she feels the same way. Doesn’t he know how disarming he is? He steals all of the words that swarm around in her brain straight from between her lips, leaves her speechless, breathless.

Eventually, they part, warm from wine and one another, and wander home. The night is cool, autumn drawing in, a sly wind stealing across the city, but it’s not enough to make Katherine shiver. She almost wishes it was, just so that Jack would take off his jacket and slip it around her shoulders again. She’s grateful, though, too, because she knows that Jack hates the cold. _Blue fingers._ It’s become an invasive thought whenever cold is mentioned, now, and whilst every time it sickens her, she’s glad of it, glad of the reminder of how precious Jack is, how lucky she is to have him here with her. As they near their street, she grips his hand a little tighter.

“Is that Mrs. Ross in the window?” She asks as they round the corner, squinting up at a square of yellowish light set into the black shape of number forty-four.

Jack follows her gaze. “Yeah.” He nods down at their entwined hands with an amused smile. “Probably scandalised at our public display of affection.”

Katherine tilts her head back and laughs, loud and bright in the evening darkness. Then, when they reach the pavement in front of number forty-four, she puts her hand on his chest to stop him in his tracks, swinging herself around to face him, a wicked smile playing across her lips. She leans in close, so close that Jack can hardly breathe – and he’s spent the last month in this woman’s bed, how does she still have the capacity to steal all of the oxygen from his lungs? – and whispers.

“Let’s scandalise her some more then, shall we?”

With that, she pulls him into a kiss. It’s warm and messy and Jack can taste the wine on her tongue, sweet and tart and it’s the best thing he’s ever tasted in his life and he wants more, he wants more of her, more of this, wants this life, this dream-like existence that he’s somehow stumbled into living never to end. So he kisses her back, her hands coming up to tangle in his hair, nearly knocking that cap clean off his head, and she tugs just a little, and he can’t help it, he lets out a little moan into her mouth, and he can feel her smiling, proud of herself. He’d be proud, Jack thinks, if he were a woman like Katherine. Smart, strong, independent, kind. Beautiful, the kind of beautiful that scars and wrinkles and age don’t wear away. Jack is perfectly certain that he’s still going to be admiring her face every morning when he’s eighty.

He pulls away, breathless, and tells her so. Or, at least, as close as he can get. “Hell, but I love you, Ace.”

And she’s always the one who has all the words, always has been, and he’s always been better with actions, so he sweeps her up and into his arms like he did that first night they walked into their house as a married couple, and he carries her inside.

By the time the church bells toll nine the next morning, Mrs. Sanchez down the street, incidentally a close friend of Mrs. Ross, has been reliably informed that the new Mr. Kelly from number forty-two had his hands up under his wife’s skirt in the middle of the pavement the night before.


	49. Chapter 49

September slips into October with not so much as a whisper, as if the seasons are trying to fool them into believing that nothing is changing at all. Little does, for the Kellys.

They work, they laugh, they have frankly obscene amounts of people over for dinner. By the middle of October, Saturday evening has become the night for having dinner in the Kelly kitchen (after the end of Shabbat, of course, which sometimes involves them not eating until nine pm). Such dinners feature a revolving cast of characters, but Davey, Race, and Crutchie are permanent features, usually with a sprinkling of other newsies and appearances from Daisy, Medda, and Daniel. Poor Daniel, he didn’t know quite what had hit him the first time Jack invited him to what has become known as ‘family dinner night’, despite not one of them being related to each other, turning up on their doorstep in a suit and carrying a bottle of wine. Once he got used to it though, he fit in just fine.

On the third Saturday in October, family dinner night is a surprisingly small affair, featuring only the regulars. Indeed, when Katherine storms in the door at three in the afternoon, Shabbat hasn’t even finished yet, meaning that the kitchen is home only to Jack, Crutchie, Race, and an enormous pot of soup.

“That no-good, idiotic, arrogant little son-of-a-bitch!”

“Someone’s cheery today.” Race remarks from his seat in one of the kitchen chairs, his feet (admittedly only sock-clad, he’s not a heathen) resting on the table.

Katherine doesn’t dignify him with a response, instead shoving his feet off the table and shooting him a glare. Duly chastised, Race pulls out a cigar from the inside pocket of his jacket and stoppers his mouth with it. Katherine makes a beeline for her husband, who lays aside the spoon he’s been using to stir the soup and opens his arms. He knows the drill for bad days well enough at this juncture.

“My editor is the most awful man on the face of the planet.” Katherine moans into his chest.

“Ain’t that your father?” Offers Race, speaking around the cigar.

“Not helpful, Race.” Jack mutters, wrapping his arms around his wife.

He’d known, of course he had, that something was brewing when Katherine received a message calling her into the office on a Saturday morning. Of course, something has been brewing for substantially longer than that. Whilst his commissions are now at a manageable rate (and are bringing in enough extra cash, on top of his salary from the Journal, that he’s starting to feel like a half-decent husband), Katherine’s career is less than conducive to things such as a proper sleep schedule.

Most weeknights, she’s tapping away at her typewriter until the early hours. Jack has had to implement a curfew of one in the morning, at which point, if she hasn’t already fallen asleep at her desk, the typewriter keys imprinting a pattern on her cheek and the half-dried letters smearing ink across her forehead, he has to forcibly remove her to the bedroom. Except, Katherine is more than capable of matching any amount of force Jack can exert, so forcible removal usually constitutes him breaking out the puppy eyes and telling her that he doesn’t sleep right without her, or distracting her with kisses planted along her neck, or saying that he needs her with him for if he wakes up from a nightmare. (That last one is a bit below the belt, he won’t lie, but a guy’s got to do what a guy’s got to do if his wife plans on working herself into the ground. Besides, that last one never fails, so it’s only his last resort.)

“So, he calls Johnson and I into the office and tells us that the Sun have been offered an exclusive interview with _William Jennings Bryan._ ” Katherine pauses for dramatic effect, except it becomes substantially less dramatic when Race leans across the kitchen table and whispers to Crutchie:

“Who’s that?”

“I think he’s runnin’ for president?” Crutchie whispers back. Thoroughly underwhelmed by the reaction, Katherine ploughs on.

“So he’s got me and Johnson, the spotty kid with less than three weeks under his belt, stood in front of him, and he and gives _Johnson_ the interview with Bryan and tells me that first thing Monday morning there is an official restaurant opening that he wants me to cover. He dismisses us, Johnson leaves, and I obviously ask him why he gave Johnson the interview, and do you know what he says? He says that they need an _unbiased_ perspective. I point out that _I’m_ less biased than Johnson, because I can’t bloody well vote! And he says it’s not so much about bias, but that he doesn’t want me going into ‘hysterics like this’ whilst interviewing the possible next president!”

Throughout this speech, her voice rises into something shrill that hurts Jack’s ears, but he doesn’t pull away. Like him, sometimes Katherine needs to rage at the world. She holds him while he does so, it’s only fair to return the favour.

“Is now a bad time to tell you that you _do_ sound a bit hysterical?” Race asks, earning a glare from Katherine that could wilt an evergreen. “We hate Johnson.” Race concludes, nodding sagely.

Crutchie follows suit. “I hope that Johnson dies a slow an’ painful death in a dark hole, ‘f that helps.” He offers, ridiculously hopeful in his insult. Katherine laughs into Jack’s chest.

“Well, I wish he’d do it before Monday, if he’s going to, so that I can do the interview instead.”

Crutchie frowns, looking down at his twisted leg, halfway between comic and forlorn. “The leg’s pretty good, Kath, but I don’ think it’s that good.”

She laughs again, emerging from her hiding spot in Jack’s arms. “I’m sorry,” she sniffs, “I just…”

“Nah,” Jack shakes his head, bringing one hand up to cup her face and brushing away a stray tear with the calloused pad of his thumb, “you’s got a right to be upset.”

Her bottom lip trembles, but she doesn’t cry, not properly. She’s been crying a lot lately, more than normal, though she’s not sure quite why. Everything just feels a little bit heightened, like she’s standing in a room at the height of summer, the air stuffy, heavy, oppressive.

“Hey, this’ll cheer you up,” Crutchie tells her, “Racer, tell Kath what Specs said yesterday…”

By the time that Davey arrives, Katherine is laughing, at least, but Jack can see the tears lurking in the corners of her eyes. He eats one-handed at dinner and Katherine doesn’t even tell him off, mainly because he’s got his free hand resting on her knee under the table, warm and steady and comforting.

She plays hostess all evening, and it’s not that she isn’t happy to; she loves having the boys around, the house wouldn’t be the same without them. Katherine knew when she married Jack that their house would always be full of people, full of family. But she feels ill and disappointed, and as much as the newsies are a nice distraction, all she really wants to do is crawl into bed with her husband and let him trace patterns on her back until she falls asleep.

By the time Jack has walked the boys to the door and waved them off, Katherine is ready for bed, dressed in her nightgown with teeth already brushed, curled up under the covers. Jack doesn’t need telling twice, following suit and pulling her into his arms just as soon as he slips in between the sheets beside her. Nestling into his chest, Katherine cries, looking up at the stars. Jack, bless him, just makes soothing noises and rubs her back until she chokes out:

“I just keep getting passed over and I’m staying up half the night working on articles and I’m so stressed, I can barely keep food down, I just… I don’t know what the problem is.”

It takes until the second weekend in November before Katherine figures out exactly what the problem is, which is probably longer than it should have taken somebody as smart as her. Well, ‘the problem’ is a bit steep, but it’s certainly a rather large chunk of it.

It’s a Saturday, but there’s uncommon peace in the Kelly home, with the boys meeting at the lodgehouse tonight. Race has asked for Jack’s help with getting some of the younger boys in line, so just as soon as Jack’s been over to Crutchie’s apartment to help him figure out how to fix the sink (because the landlord is, in Jack’s words, a piece of shit), the two of them are going to take dinner over there and lend a hand. Katherine, therefore, has Daisy over.

The showgirl has brought lemonade, courtesy of her sister, who, apparently, is getting into domestic crafts within her new role as a housewife. Daisy has also offered them some socks she’s made, which were, by all accounts, more poorly knitted than the sweater Katherine gave Jack last Christmas, and were thus hastily declined. However, the lemonade isn’t half bad, served in a set of glasses that were a wedding present from Edith – a gift that surprised Katherine, to say the least, but that make her smile every time she opens the cupboard that they sit in. Whilst Katherine has tucked her stocking feet up into the armchair, Daisy has kicked off her shoes and is stretched out across the sofa, ignoring her glass of lemonade in favour of telling a very animated story about the events of the previous night’s performance at the Bowery, which has Katherine doubled over in laughter.

“…so, Pam is freakin’ out over this secret admirer, an’ our dressin’ room is jus’ covered with these ruddy red roses –“ Daisy breaks off, catching sight of a figure in the doorway to the living room, “- hey Jack!”

“Daisy!” Jack grins, wandering in. “How’s things?”

“Y’know, gettin’ by. You’s lookin’ very smart.”

Jack looks down at himself, remembers he’s wearing the waistcoat and trousers set that Katherine bought him for his birthday because he’s still never gone into a tailor’s and he’s damned if he’s going to start now. Still, he’s secretly rather pleased with it, the sturdy, dark-blue wool.

“Thanks.” Jack nods in easy acknowledgement, then stoops to brush a kiss across Katherine’s lips, lingering just a little longer than is strictly appropriate for a goodbye kiss. “I’s off now, sweetheart, won’t be back until late, so don’ wait up –“

“You know I will.” Katherine cuts him off.

She’s discovered that it’s now become impossible for her to get to sleep if Jack isn’t holding her, a phenomenon that seems to have been exacerbated by the debacle with the nightmares and him sleeping on the sofa. Katherine finds herself now hyper-aware of his presence in their bed, unwilling, even in sleep, to let go of him.

“How you doin’?” Jack frowns, taking her chin between his thumb and forefinger, tilting her face up to him and pressing the back of his other hand against her forehead, searching for a fever. “You’s lookin’ a bit pale still.”

“I’m fine, Jack.” Katherine swats his hands away, smiling and shaking her head. “It’s just a stomach bug, it’ll pass. Go on.”

“You ain’t been well, Kath?” Daisy frowns.

“I’ll say,” Jack snorts, “she’s been throwin’ up every mornin’ this week.”

“I’m _fine._ ” Katherine insists, pushing at his side. “Now, go, I love you.”

“Love you too.” Jack smiles down at her, warm and fond, before heading for the door, raising a hand to their guest. “See you, Daisy.”

“See you, Jack.” Daisy calls from her position on the sofa. She doesn’t say anything until they both hear the front door close. As soon as it does, she snaps to face Katherine, face unreadable. “Throwin’ up? Every mornin’?”

Katherine looks at her, confused. “It’s nothing.”

“When didja last bleed?” Daisy demands, not about to be put off. All the colour drains from Katherine’s face.

“You don’t think – Daisy!”

“When was it?” Daisy’s voice is low and insistent.

Katherine knows that it’s not a good sign when she actually has to think about that question. “The week after our honeymoon.”

“So, two months since.” Daisy says, very matter-of-fact. “You ain’t bled for two months an’ you’s throwin’ up every mornin’.”

There’s no question. Two months. With everything else that’s been going on, Katherine’s barely noticed its absence. If anything, she’s forgotten about it, repressed it, probably, after the first time it happened, back in September, and her and Jack had woken up with bloody bedsheets. Poor Jack, he thought that she was injured, that he’d somehow accidentally hurt her in the middle of the night and had worked himself into a right state before she’d managed to explain, cheeks aflame, that this was normal. Credit where credit is due, after she’d explained it, Jack had been wonderful – changing any soiled bedsheets without complaint the entire week and sneaking a bar of that new Hershey’s chocolate into her work bag. Still, it’s not something one talks about, as kind as Jack had been about it all, and it had been terribly embarrassing. Not having it was about to get more than embarrassing, she’s pretty sure.

“Shit.”

She cannot be pregnant. She just can’t. She’s nineteen, for pity’s sake. She has a career. She’s got so much ahead of her, articles to write, people to save, things to do. She needs more time than this, damnit, more time to be brilliant, to be the star reporter that Jack’s always telling her she is. Jack. She needs more time with Jack. She’s barely managing this whole being a wife thing, never mind being a mother. She needs time. A whole new century spread out in front of her, hers for the taking, hers for the making, and this? This is what she gets?

“Shit, shit, shit.” Katherine hisses, pressing her hands to either side of her head, crushing her fists against her temples.

“Hey.” Daisy gets up, coming to kneel in front of Katherine, taking hold of her hands. “You an’ Jack, you’s talked ‘bout kids, ain’t you?”

“Yes,” Katherine bites her lip, “but… in the future. Not now! I’m nineteen. I can barely look after myself, never mind a baby.”

 _This cannot be happening. This absolutely cannot be happening. How?_ They’ve been using the sheaths and she’s even bought one of those godawful pessaries that the women from the suffrage magazine recommended. They’ve been so careful.

“How did this even happen?”

Daisy smiles at her, a little bit mischievous, squeezing her hands. “I think you knows _exactly_ how it happened.”

“Not helpful, Daisy.” She _knows_ that Daisy is trying to help her find the humour in this, but it’s really, really not working.

“Hey, my auntie, she reckons she can tell whether it’s goin’ to be a boy or a girl jus’ by feelin’ at your tits. You want me to ask her to call round?” One look from Katherine is enough to silence Daisy on that particular topic. Clearly, folk tales are not the order of the day.

“What the hell – what – I have absolutely no idea how I’m going to do this.” Katherine buries her face in her hands. “Never mind that – how am I going to tell Jack?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, yes I did go there. Updates may be a little slower over the next few days; I'm going to try and keep them at daily, but it may dip to two or three days apart with university deadlines absolutely decimating my mental capacity, sorry! Comments, as always, make my day :)


	50. Chapter 50

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so. There’s a detailed description of dead bodies in this chapter, as well as a pretty vague discussion of abortion. The two are unrelated. I mean, you know what to expect from me at this stage, but… yeah. Strap in, folks.
> 
> Also, nothing makes me happier than reading your comments - thank you so much to all of you who leave them on each chapter, they never fail to make me smile :)

Jack has been kneeling in front of his wife, one of her hands in his, for a full ten minutes, and he’s still none the wiser. She’d shot out into the hallway just as he’d got home, mouth open, ready to tell him. Until, that is, she realised that she has absolutely no idea what to say. Which is how they’ve ended up here, with her sat on the sofa and Jack kneeling in front of her. He looks how she feels, like his world is ending, like it’s crumbling around him into dust.

This whole thing would be less distressing, Jack thinks, if she would just look at him. He’s sure that if she will just make eye contact with him then he will be able to coax out of her whatever it is that’s sent her sideways. But no, she won’t even look at him, instead staring down into her lap where one of his hands is intertwined with hers.

“Kath, love, whatever it is, it can’t be as bad as you’s makin’ out.” He squeezes her hand. “Jus’ spit it out.”

He isn’t sure if he wants her to. What if today is the day she realises how useless he is? What if today is the day she leaves?

 _Just spit it out, Katherine. Two words, really simple. I’m pregnant. Just say it. I’m pregnant._ “I – I think I’m pregnant.”

She says the words to the hands intertwined on her lap, unable to meet his eyes. She can’t look at him, she just can’t. But then he doesn’t answer, his hand gone limp in hers, and the silence stretches on for seconds, minutes, hours. So she has to look, she has to. She dares, glances up, Jack’s face unreadable, unreadable to the point where she has to beg him because she has to know, she has to.

“Jack, say something.” It’s as if the words wake him from a dream. His eyes, unfocused, blown wide, snap back to her, seeing her for the first time.

“Okay.” Jack settles back on his heels, his free hand stuffing itself into his hair, scratching at his scalp. He swallows, heavy, laboured. “Okay.”

“Something other than okay?”

He blinks. “Are y’sure?”

“Pretty sure.” Katherine nods slowly, not quite sure what Jack wants the answer to be. Really, she supposes, it doesn’t matter what either of them wants. “I’ve been being sick every morning and I haven’t bled since September.”

“Okay.” Jack nods, tight and jerky, then catches her irritated gaze. “Sorry, I – I thought we was bein’ careful?”

“Not careful enough, apparently.”

“We’s goin’ to have a baby, Ace.” Jack’s voice is quiet, prayerful, a voice that burns incense in a church. “A _baby_.”

They’re having a baby. He’s going to be a dad. A child. The family he’s always wanted, craved, hankered after. The eight-year-old boy who sat, cold and miserable, on the bench in the park, watching the families wander past, little children in colourful woollen coats, adoring parents clasping their little reddened fingers in large hands adorned with wedding rings. Happy. That’s going to be him. That’s going to be him and Katherine.

That’s going to be him and Katherine. What the hell. He has no idea how to be a dad. What if he ends up like his old man? What if Katherine… what if Katherine ends up like his mother?

“I can’t do this!” His thoughts shatter at her tone. Katherine’s crying, now. “We’re nineteen, Jack, we can’t be parents!”

Jack sucks in a breath. Katherine. He can do this, he has Katherine. He has to do this for Katherine. Strong, sensible. Be the husband and father he doesn’t have a clue how to be. Jack tenses the muscles of his legs underneath him, forcing himself further down against the floorboards. He will not run. Even though it’s all he wants to do, he will not run. Katherine. Katherine is more important.

“Speak for yoursel’, I’s twenty.” He forces a smile onto his face, but that just seems to distress Katherine more, so he quickly wipes it off, bringing his free hand up to clasp hold of her other one, ducking his head to chase her gaze until she’s looking at him again. “Hey, hey. We’ll figure it out. We’s done crazier things, you an’ me, huh?”

“But everything I’ve worked for.” Katherine tells him, squeezing his hands to the point of pain. “The second that Mr. Ross realises I’m pregnant he’ll lay me off. I’ll never write again.”

“So, we don’ tell him.” Jack shrugs, then grins up at her. “It’ll take him at least six months to work up the courage to ask you ‘f you is, for fear o’ implyin’ you’s gettin’ fat.”

“Jack.” She sounds desperate in a way that makes his chest tighten.

“Kath, we’ll figure it out.” He breaks one hand out of her grip, gesturing wildly. “You can still write, jus’ maybe not for the Sun. You’s got those fiction stories you’s always workin’ on, an’ the stuff for the suffrage magazine. You don’ hafta give that stuff up. I know it’s scary, but we’ll get through.”

 _Can’t she see it?_ Yes, it’s terrifying, but they have the whole world spread out in front of them, theirs for the taking. They have a house, he has a job steady enough to support the both of them, they’re going to have a child. They’ve got everything, everything they could ever possibly want.

“But what about when it’s here? I can’t – I don’t want to just stay at home, Jack. I want children, of course, I do, but not yet! I want to do something first!”

“It ain’t ideal timin’, but ‘s okay. You could go back to work part-time, you won’t have no trouble gettin’ another job. Or we hires a nanny.”

“You… you want to keep it?”

Jack thinks he might throw up. He’s heard stories, you don’t grow up alongside the dockyard girls or socialise with the girls at Medda’s without hearing them. Hot baths, they used to say, real hot, scald your skin lobster-red, some sort of purification in the steam. Whisky, mixed with ipecac. Or, worst of all, the stories of the housewives in their dirty tenement blocks, whispers of their trade, the tools they sterilise in the grease-stained ovens, pools of blood cleaned up before the younger children troop in from the street, the older ones from the factories.

“Well, I ain’t lettin’ some old lady have at you wi’ a wire coat hanger on her kitchen table, Kath.”

Katherine blanches, that wasn’t what she’d meant, not what she’d meant at all, she couldn’t do that if she wanted to. Which she doesn’t. The thought shocks her. She _wants_ this baby. Yes, the timing is terrible, but Jack’s right. They can make this work. Things never do seem to quite go their way, but they make them work. They’ve made this work, this thing between them that hums, electric, this marriage, this family that they’ve built, that they’ve brought together.

She wants this. She wants a child with Jack’s hair and her eyes, wants a little person that’s theirs, who they made, with tiny fingers and toes, full of hope, who’ll know a family the likes of which neither of them had. A family that’s unconditional, and loves them accordingly. But Jack – she knows, through his whispers in the dark, through his past behaviour, that he must be scared out of his wits. She can see it in his eyes, dark and darting, that he wants to run, knows that he’s holding back for her sake. So she has to ask, because this can’t be just what she wants. Jack has to want this too.

“No, I mean…” she squeezes her eyes shut, hoping that it isn’t what he wants, “you don’t want to give it up?”

Jack snatches his hand away, as if he can’t bear to touch her. “What? How – how couldja even say somethin’ like that?”

Katherine blinks her eyes open, filling with tears once more as Jack jolts to his feet, stumbling backwards away from her, bracing a white-knuckled hand on the mantelpiece. “I thought you weren’t ready,” she protests, “I –“

“No kid o’ mine is goin’ into some damn orphanage to grow up under the thumb o’ some Synder.” Jack spits, head down, not looking at her, but pointing at her, yes, one finger of his free hand, accusatory. “‘F you want your career, Kath, then you fuck off an’ get it, but I ain’t givin’ my kid up. No way.”

Jack’s never sworn in front of her, not like that, never mind _at_ her. Well, at least they’re on the same page. She should have known that that would be what sets him off, that it’d be the thought of a child in pain that would do it, after everything. Something warm blossoms inside of her chest.

“I love you, Jack.”

He closes his eyes, pained, trying to gather himself. She waits. She’ll wait a lifetime for him to come back to her, if she has to.

“I love you too.”

“And I love this baby, because it’s ours.”

Jack nods, finally meeting her eyes. “Me too.”

Later, much later, lying in their bed, Jack thinks back to this time a year ago, a year that feels like a lifetime, months that have been hard as hell but blissful in it. He thinks of the time that they lay together, much like this, in the darkness of Medda’s theatre, the way that the worn velvet felt beneath his fingers and how much softer Katherine had seemed than that fabric. He thinks of the secrets that he told her then, words spoken into darkness, words full of meaning dissolving in empty air, rejected scripts for half-finished plays, things that neither of them could understand, not then.

“Y’know how you said I has to tell you things?”

He’s half hoping she’s asleep already, that he won’t have to say it, but he has to try. He’s got to be better, to show up for her, because it’s Katherine, because they’re a family, and this life that they’ve built together has to be stable, has to be ready for another person to come into it. They have to get it all out, spread out on the table in front of them in black and white newsprint. For their sake. For the baby’s.

“Mm?” _Damnit_.

“I’s real scared, Ace.”

“Why?”

Why, indeed. There are many answers that he could give to such a question. For all of his blustering, Jack knows that he’s just a blowhard, faking confidence in the hopes that it’ll all turn out alright. He’s fucking terrified, always has been.

The first time Jack saw a dead body, he was eight. His father had been grey for as long as Jack could remember, grey hair, turned so before its time; grey skin, washed out like a half-developed photograph; grey eyes, hard and steely and sparking when the mood took him to dole out a beating. It had taken Jack a full minute to realise that the man on the sofa - no, the _body_ – that he’d been trying to shake awake was grey because it was dead. He was told, later, by the landlord that kicked him out onto the street, that his father had choked on his own vomit, unable to breathe, too drunk to turn himself onto his side and spit it out. It was the first time that Jack understood why his father hadn’t been fully grey, why the tips of his father’s fingers, just shy of brushing against the floor as his arm dangled, lifeless, over the side of the sofa, had been blue, a bluish-purple that stained the fingernails like that strange, foul-smelling polish that the working girls down by the docks used.

Jack has seen a lot of dead bodies since. The boys at the Refuge and the lodgehouse; croup, scarlet fever, polio, if you can name it, Jack’s seen a kid dead with it, like some sick sort of bucket list, and of course it always fell to him to shoo away the other boys and deal with it, their innocence still intact. He’s seen more than his fair share of grey faces and blue fingers. And he’s fucking terrified of seeing another.

He doesn’t want to be a grey-faced father, not dead on the sofa, but rotting from the inside out, gangrenous. He doesn’t want to be his old man, tossed to the curb and bitter with it, beating on his wife, beating on his kid. He’d rather be dead completely, choke on his own vomit. But what is he supposed to do instead? He doesn’t know anything except the grey, doesn’t know how to be anything apart from it. Katherine is the colour in his life and he paints her as such, but how long will she be able to stay so if his grey keeps on encroaching, sneaking, like mould stretching out its grasping, groping fingers across a ceiling?

“I dunno how to be a dad.” He chokes out, as if the mould has got into his throat. “My old man… I don’ wanta be like him, Kath. What ‘f I turn out like him?”

Katherine, previously nuzzling into his shoulder, stills. Jack wonders whether this is it, whether this is what breaks them. Then, abrupt, she sits up in their bed, yanking him up beside her, and takes his face between her hands.

“Jack Kelly, you are nothing like your father.” She is fierce, strong, every bit the woman he married, the woman that he fell in love with, that he falls in love with over again each day. Jack knows, no doubt in his mind, that she’ll be a fantastic mother. “You are strong and kind and wonderful and you’re going to make a fantastic father. Look at all the newsies! You raised all of them and they’ve turned out brilliantly.”

“‘S different.” Jack mumbles, swiping at his nose with the back of his hand.

“No, it’s not.” Her hands tighten on his face, forcing him to look at her, forcing him to allow himself to be convinced. “We’ll muddle through, you and me. You’ll be a great dad.”

Hell. When Katherine says it, her and her words, he can just about believe it. He can just about believe it. “Okay.”

Katherine searches his eyes for a moment, catches a new sort of conviction there, then, satisfied, settles the two of them back against the pillows. Jack allows her to, just for a moment, in the quiet of their bedroom, look after him. Tomorrow he will get up and he will be strong for her, like he was today, tensing his muscles and not running out the door, not wanting to run out the door, because he loves her. But just for now, it’s okay. This thing they’ve got going on, it goes both ways. And it’s the most wonderful thing he’s ever known.

“Do you remember him?” Katherine asks him, her breath brushing against the shell of his ear. “Your father?”

“Bits an’ pieces.” Jack admits. Barely visible in the darkness of their bedroom, he waves a hand vaguely. “Not real clear, like. I remember the beatin’s he handed out better than him. He was kinda… angular, like. All hard edges. Y’know?”

And she sort of does. Katherine has realised that Jack sees the world very differently to her. Her brain craves pattern and order and logic, where Jack is more fluid. Jack sees the ways in which objects flow into one another, their lines and shades and textures. She wishes, sometimes, that she could see the world through his eyes, just for a while, just to see what it’s like. But there’s a reason they work so well together. She needs his creativity; he needs her structure. They need each other.

“Why?” Jack asks. Katherine bites her lip.

“I don’t remember what Lucy looked like. I mean, I do, but her face… it’s sort of…gone.”

It’s strange, to say it out loud. To admit it. When it’s echoing around her own head, it feels like a failing, like if she’d only loved Lucy better then she might be able to remember properly. She feels Jack tug her a little bit closer. She doesn’t feel like so much of a failure anymore.

“We should call our kid Lucy. ‘F it’s a girl, o’ course.”

“Really?”

“Mm. Whaddaya want for a boy?”

Katherine thinks for a moment. When she and Lucy were little, they used to draw pictures of imaginary weddings and plan their children’s names. Growing up, coming into herself, she’d never thought that she’d be married at nineteen, that she’d be pregnant. She’d wanted independence. But now? She likes having Jack, having him to rely on, having him rely on her. She never thought that this would be her life, but she’d hate to be living any other. 

“I like Thomas.”

“Thomas ‘s nice.” Jack turns his head, presses a kiss to her forehead. He presses words into her skin, words so quiet that she almost doesn’t hear them, almost quieter than the flutter of her eyes closing. Almost. “Don’ leave me, alright?”

“What do you mean?”

“My mother –“

 _Oh. Jack, her darling Jack._ “Jack. Your mother gave birth twenty years ago in a filthy slum. I will have our baby here. In this bedroom, with a midwife or a doctor, in a clean, warm house with good food and medicine. You can’t get rid of me that easily, okay?”

“Okay.”

Jack tries not to let the words _filthy slum_ hurt as much as they do. There’s some truth to them, of course, but it’s strange to think of that one room apartment that he spent the first eight years of his life in, on and off, when they could scrape together the rent, as a filthy slum. Katherine’s words do offer some modicum of comfort, though. It’s her, after all, and she’s never been one too shy away from something just because it’s dangerous. He wouldn’t have her any other way.

“Why ain’t you afraid? O’ dyin?”

“Because I believe in a God who promises unconditional salvation to those who believe in him. I have nothing to fear.” And _of course_ , that’s her answer. Jack doesn’t think he’ll ever understand this faith that she has, this incredible trust she has in something that she’s never seen. But then she puts trust in him, and she knows him, knows every part of him, the places where he’s stitched together, and still she loves him, and anything’s possible if that is. “Are you? Afraid of dying, I mean.”

“No. I’s jus’ afraid o’ you leavin’ me alone.”

“I didn’t say I wasn’t afraid of _your_ death, Jack, only that I’m not afraid of mine.” She reaches over his bare chest and takes hold of his left hand with hers, the rings on their fingers clinking together. “I promise not to leave you, so long as you promise not to leave me.”

“For sure?”

“For sure.”


	51. Chapter 51

It’s almost a week before Jack really, properly panics about it again, prompted by Katherine turning up on Thursday evening with a knitting pattern for baby booties. That, in itself, Jack thinks, would be cause for concern, considering Katherine’s track record with knitting; though he _does_ still have that sweater, despite the fact that he’s never actually worn it since she gave it to him, because it’s the first time anybody has ever made something specifically for him and he’s not just going to throw something like that away.

However, there’s the thought of having a baby and then the actual practicalities, such as clothing it in things like little vests and baby booties. They have, they’ve determined, enough money to sort themselves out, even if Katherine doesn’t go back to work. Between Jack’s salary, the odd commission, and their combined savings, they’re going to be fine. It had been a trial in and of itself to determine that, sitting at the kitchen table and hashing out numbers until Jack’s head had spun. In the end, Katherine had marched over to the cupboard and produced the box of numbers. He’d protested _vehemently,_ but, as usual, Katherine had got her way in the end. Jack’s just grateful that she was so matter-of-fact about the whole thing, instead of being simpering and sympathetic, just telling him to pull himself together and _use the ruddy numbers,_ until the redness around his ears had dissipated.

Still, there’s other issues surrounding children, other than financial ones. What about diapers? Jack doesn’t have a clue how to change a diaper and he’s pretty damn sure that Katherine doesn’t either, despite having younger siblings. What if the kid gets sick and he doesn’t know what to do? Jack’s good at dealing with illnesses, he’s had to be, over the years, but all the kids that he’s cared for have been able to tell him what hurts. Babies can’t do that.

Which is how Jack ends up sat at the kitchen table of the Jacobs’ apartment, Esther pressing a glass of brandy into his shaking hand to _calm his nerves._ He’s all kinds of pathetic, Jack knows, but Katherine’s got enough on her plate what with throwing up every morning and suddenly having to adjust to the concept of growing another human being inside of her without him having a minor mental breakdown about his inability to be a father. Esther’s solution to this problem does not help his nerves. In fact, it undoes all of the brandy’s good work and then some.

Her solution involves him talking to Mayer. Which, if Jack really thinks about it, is probably pretty sensible. After all, the bloke has raised three successful, well-mannered kids. Jack could probably learn a lot from him. Whether this whole thing will work out, on the other hand, remains to be seen.

Mayer sits down opposite Jack at the table as Esther shoos Les out of the kitchen, the boy bemoaning the fact that Jack needing privacy with Mayer in the kitchen is what is separating him from the biscuits that have freshly emerged from the oven. In any other circumstances, Jack would be chuckling at the boy’s petulance, but right at this moment he’s just trying to figure out if he can get to the door before Mayer, if he needs to.

“You know, I was terrified before Sarah was born, too.” Mayer tells him.

It takes Jack a moment to realise that he’s talking to him. _Don’t be stupid, Kelly, you’re the only other one in here._ “Y’were?”

“Goodness, yes.” The man laughs. The lines on Mayer’s face, the ones around his eyes from a lifetime of laughter and cares, crinkle deeper. “I had no idea what to expect.”

“But… didn’t you have parents?”

“I did. But, as I think you know, Jack, having parents doesn’t mean that they show you the right way to do things.” _Well, that’s certainly true._ “You really only need to do one thing to be a good father, and that is love your children. Which,” Mayer glares at Les, who has snuck back in and is currently involved in trying to sneak one of the forbidden biscuits off the tray, causing him to snatch his hand back and slope out of the kitchen, “is sometimes more difficult than others.”

“But, I already love them.” Jack assures him, tension draining from his shoulders as he slumps forward a little. “I jus’… don’ know what to do.”

“Judging by how you behave toward your wife, Jack, I think you know exactly how to love people well. You talk sense into them when they’re about to do something unbearably stupid, you let them make their own mistakes when what they want to do is less stupid, and you show them that you love them, that you’re proud of them, no matter what. Nobody has some sort of guidebook.”

…

Naturally, more people know, now, than just them. Katherine, of course, hasn’t begun to show yet, but she likes to think that there’s a certain roundness to her belly that wasn’t there before, something firmer about it. While Jack has a wash, one evening, she stands in front of the mirror in their bedroom and pulls up her nightdress, turning from side to side, examining. It’s a strange feeling, wanting to see the swell of her own skin, craving it, but she’s so desperate for this to work out, for everything to go just right.

She’s caught Jack talking to her stomach a couple of times, when he’s thought she’s asleep, after she read him a particularly amusing article from a women’s magazine about the importance of talking to your unborn child. For her part, Katherine puts little stock in such hogwash, though she’s having to make a concerted effort not to keep laying a protective hand on her stomach whilst she’s at work for fear of giving the game away, given her recently formed habit of her hand gravitating there. She still can’t quite bring herself to tell Jack to stop though, even though him talking to her stomach is patently ridiculous. It happens when he wakes a little earlier than her, or falls asleep a little later, sliding down the bed and laying his lips against her stomach, whispering words that she can’t quite make out, but doesn’t need to, can tell from the tone of his voice that they’re laden with love, that he’s telling their little one stories about Santa Fe, about their soon-to-be uncles, about how much they’re loved. It feels precious somehow, sacred, in a way that she can’t bear to spoil.

Jack’s unbearably excited, she knows, much as one of his foul moods can dull it with worries for her safety and his capability. This is what Jack wants, she knows, what he’s always wanted, deep down, despite his delusions of Santa Fe. His dreams are average-sized, a little house, a woman who loves him, children. Family.

Yet, they still have to work out how to tell their extended family about it. There’s Mayer and Esther who know, of course, plus Sarah and Les because Esther had shooed them out of the kitchen just as soon as Jack turned up on their doorstep shaking and talking about a pregnancy. And then Daisy. Katherine had turned up at Daisy’s rooms across town the day after they’d found out to go wool shopping (for the aforementioned baby booties, and possibly a little cardigan, if Katherine decides that she’s feeling brave). And if Katherine had dragged her into another shop and bought Daisy a very fetching pashmina as a thank-you for helping her the day before, well, that was just part of the trip.

But that leaves all of the boys. Davey will just have to wait, caught up as he is in his exams, but when Jack asks him to come for dinner in a couple of weeks because they’ve got some news and he asks if he can bring Miriam to meet them, Jack’s pretty sure that he and Katherine having a baby will be the least of the revelations around that particular table. As for the rest of them, they elect to drag Crutchie over to the lodgehouse one night after work and tell all the boys together.

When they arrive at the lodgehouse, a lot of the boys haven’t yet returned from selling the evening edition, and there’s only Crutchie, who they brought along with them, Race, and Mush in the dorm. The five of them unpack the food that Jack brought along onto the kitchen table, Race swiping an apple as ‘payment for his labour’ and then head back, spreading themselves out across the beds and greeting the boys as they come in. Whilst Katherine still retains enough of her upbringing to perch on the edge of one of the beds, Jack has no such qualms, stretching out across a mattress and pillowing his hands under his head.

Albert (who, it turns out, the mattress belongs to) tells Jack that _that’s my bed_ as soon as he walks in, to which Jack merely cracks open one eye and replies:

“You ain’t usin’ it. Finders keepers.”

Apparently, Jack, despite having been living outside of the lodgehouse for more than a year, has not lost his authority over his boys, as Albert just rolls his eyes and walks away. Soon, all of the boys arrive, and Jack whistles for their attention, silencing the chatter.

“So, we’s brought food –“ a chorus of excited _yeses_ ripple across the dormitory, “- an’ we’s got some news.” Jack pauses a moment and looks over at Katherine, grinning. “We’s havin’ a baby.”

The room, predictably, explodes, the boys swarming Jack with playful punches, pinning him to the bed in their own little way of saying congratulations. It’s only seven-year-old Peter, who remains, if not the youngest newsie, then still the smallest thanks to a nasty case of rickets that he still has to wear the leg braces Jack bought him to correct, instead wandering up to Katherine and frowning at her.

“Where is this baby, then?”

Katherine smiles. “The baby is in my tummy, Peter.”

Peter’s face turns ghostly white and he cries, horrified, quickly retreating from her: “You _ate_ the baby?”

That particular pronouncement gets the attention of most of the newsies, who finally pile off Jack, all sniggering as Katherine blanches in response, frantically trying to reassure the small boy.

“No, no, that’s where the baby has to grow before it can come out.”

“Oh.” Peter looks relieved, at least. Then he frowns again and reaches out to poke Katherine’s stomach. (She’s not sure she’s entirely comfortable with that, but figures she’s going to have to get used to it as there’s always those odious people who decide that they are perfectly within their rights to touch a pregnant woman’s stomach without so much as a by-your-leave _._ ) “How’d the baby get in there?”

“Yeah, Jack,” a grin spreads across Crutchie’s face, “how’d the baby get in there?”

“Shuddup.” Jack rolls his eyes, sitting up on the bed opposite Katherine’s and leaning down to talk to Peter. “Babies happen by magic, Pete, when you loves another person a lot.”

Race snorts. “I bet the neighbours can confirm ‘s a _lot_.” Jack grabs a balled-up pair of socks that are lying on the floor and throws them at Race’s head. He misses, Race catching them neatly – he’d make one hell of a baseball player, Jack thinks – before throwing them back, catching Jack in the leg.

“You can do magic?” Peter asks, his mouth hanging open.

Jack bites his lip to suppress a grin, meeting Katherine’s amused eyes over Peter’s head. “Yeah, I can.” He says, shooting Katherine a wink that has her cracking up with laughter.

“You know,” Katherine says, later, leaning into Jack and putting her head on his shoulder as they walk back toward their house, “at some point you’re going to have to talk about the birds and the bees with our little one. They’re eventually going to figure out that it’s not magic.”

“Not ‘f ‘s a Lucy and not a Thomas.” Jack snorts. “Then, Mrs. Kelly, ‘s totally your job. I’s jus’ here to make sure she ain’t courtin’ nobody ‘til she’s at least thirty.”

“You hypocrite!” Katherine laughs, digging an elbow into his side. “You expect any suitor to listen to you when you so blatantly disregarded my father, hm?”

“To be fair, you disregarded him first.”

“You better hope our daughter doesn’t inherit that trait, then.”

“I hope she does.” Jack looks down at her, smiling and fond. “I wants her to be jus’ like you.”

A child just like Katherine. Another brave, smart, beautiful woman. Jack wants to be a part of bringing that about. He wants a little girl with his wife’s smile and bright eyes.

“I don’t,” Katherine laughs. “I’d hate to live with another me!”

“As the guy livin’ wi’ you, it really ain’t so bad. It ain’t so bad at all.”

…

By the start of December, everybody on the street is perfectly aware that Katherine Kelly is pregnant. This is unequivocally due to Mrs. Ross, though neither Katherine nor Jack can quite work out how on earth she’s managed to figure it out, given that Katherine isn’t showing through her clothes yet.

Honestly, Jack is considering putting their neighbour forward for the new investigative journalism position that’s due to open up at the Journal because he’s pretty sure that woman can find out bloody well anything. She also seems to have an uncanny ability to sense when Jack is doing something out the front of their house – today, affixing a wreath to their front door because he’s home earlier from work than his wife, for once, and she’s been wanting it done since halfway through November – and emerges onto the front step with a cigarette to question him about all sorts of things. Today, it’s baby names. She has pronounced both of their choices – Lucy and Thomas – too commonplace for her liking and is suggesting more ‘exotic’ equivalents ( _what about a nice Frida, hm?_ ) when Katherine barrels down the street towards them, calling his name.

“Jack!”

He drops the wreath, whirling round. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing! Everything is perfect!” She cries, breathless, coming to a stop in front of him, Mrs. Ross staring at her as if she’s committed some grave sin. “Mr. Ross got word of a railroad telegraphers’ strike later this week and he wants _me_ to go and cover it!”

Jack just stands there for a moment, staring down at her, then catches hold of her by the waist, picking her up and twirling her around. “Look a’ you, Mrs. Star Reporter!”

Behind them, Mrs. Ross mumbles something about impropriety. Katherine cannot bring herself to care. “My train leaves in the morning – oh, we’re meeting Miriam tonight – can you sort out dinner while I pack?”

“Wait, pack?” Jack frowns.

“Oh!” Katherine pauses as she pulls away from him, ready to hop over the forgotten wreath to get to their door. “The strike is down in Texas. I’ll be away for four days, maybe five – look,” she fumbles around in the pockets of her skirt, pulling out two pieces of paper, “I have tickets!”

“You’s travellin’ to Texas?” Jack blinks, caught up in the whirlwind of his wife.

“Yes! I need to pack – can you handle dinner?” She’s already got the front door halfway open.

“Yeah.” Jack finds himself saying, not really fully back on the ground. “Yeah, you go pack.”

Katherine grins at him before clattering up the stairs, doubtless to drag her carpet bag out from under their bed and make a terrible mess of the wardrobe that she so diligently tried to organise the previous weekend. Jack stands, a little dazed, left in her wake.

“You’ve got your hands full there, Mr. Kelly.” Mrs. Ross remarks, stubbing out her cigarette and wandering back inside.

…

Jack puts the potatoes in the pan to boil, listening to the thumps coming from upstairs – dinner needs making and he knows better than to get in the way. He stirs them in the water, wondering how exactly he’s supposed to live through four or five days with his wife and unborn child halfway across the country, alone and unprotected, chasing a story in the middle of strike action. He knows as well as anybody that whilst there are very few people in the unions who would want to hurt Katherine, strikes get violent. It’s their nature. He doesn’t want her in the middle of that. Not without him there beside her.

The knock on the door jolts him out of his thoughts and he heads over to answer it. On the doorstep is David, wearing his nicest shirt – the one that he wore for their wedding, so Jack _knows_ that he means business about this - stood just a hair too close to a woman. And, well. Davey sure knows how to pick them. Miriam is short, similar to Katherine, with curly dark hair and bright, intelligent eyes.

“Hey, Davey!” He grins, then sticks a hand out to the woman. “An’ you mus’ be Miriam, nice to meetcha, the name’s Jack.”

“Nice to meet you, Jack.” She smiles, shaking his hand, firm and pleasant. “Davey’s told me lots about you.”

“Oh, has he?” Jack laughs, raising his eyebrows at David as he stands aside to let them in. “Devastatin’ good looks, charm, talent-“

“I believe the words he used were ‘cocky sod’.” Miriam remarks, a smile twitching at the corners of her lips as Jack takes her coat. _Oh, I like her._

“Charmin’.” He snorts. “An’ to think I made you my best man.”

“You’re my best friend, Jack, but I’m not blind.” Davey grins back, clapping him on the shoulder.

Jack shows them through to the kitchen, calling up the stairs as he passes. “Kath, Davey an’ Miriam are here!”

There’s a rather loud thump from up the stairs, before Katherine’s voice calls back. “Coming! I’m just finishing off packing!”

“Packing?” Davey questions, following Jack into the kitchen.

“Believe me, she’ll tell you.”

Katherine bursts into the kitchen less than a minute later. “Davey! And you must be Miriam – I’m Katherine, it’s so nice to meet you.”

“Davey wants to know what you’s packin’ for.” Jack remarks from his spot by the stove. Katherine’s face lights up and she turns to David.

“You are looking at the reporter who’s being sent across the country, on behalf of the New York Sun, to cover the railroad telegraphers strike!”

“Congratulations! Kath, that’s amazing!” Davey sweeps her into an enormous hug.

“I leave tomorrow morning!”

Seeing Miriam sat at the kitchen table, Katherine calms her squealing a little, stepping away from David to take a seat. Miriam, however, seems utterly unfazed, simply smiling a wide, kind, smile. “You’re a reporter, Katherine?”

“Yes, for the Sun.”

“That must be fascinating; tell me, what sort of things do you write?”

 _She can stay,_ Jack decides, watching as Katherine gets sucked into an animated conversation about politics with Miriam and Davey. David’s eyes keep drifting to Miriam’s face, in profile beside him, looking like he can’t quite believe she’s sat next to him. _Oh, yes, she can definitely stay._

“So,” Jack eventually interrupts, putting the pot of stew in the centre of the table and handing the spoon to Katherine to plate it up, “we’s got some pretty big news?”

“Oh?” Davey raises his eyebrows, taking a plate from Katherine.

Jack looks over his shoulder at her, eyes glinting with _do you want to tell them, or shall I?_ Katherine grins back. Jack ploughs on. “We’s havin’ a baby.”

Davey has his fork halfway to his mouth, but the stew promptly drops right off it and into his lap at Jack’s words. He stares, wide-eyed, looking between them. Jack snorts, tossing his friend a tea-towel.

“Wha –“ Davey dabs uselessly at his lap with the cloth, “- _how_?”

Jack opens his mouth to make a snarky comment, but gets beaten to it by Miriam, who reaches out and pats David’s free hand, which is resting on the table edge. “Not a good question to ask, David, I rather think you don’t want to know.” She turns to Katherine, offering a cheerful: “Congratulations! How far along are you?”

David, for his part, turns beet red up to the tips of his ears, mouth opening and closing, soundless and fishlike, his brain seemingly unable to process Katherine’s pregnancy, Miriam’s mildly suggestive joke, and her touching his hand all at the same time. Oh, Jack is never going to let him forget this.

…

The evening finds them quietly, after Davey and Miriam have left, intertwined in the armchair, Katherine staring into the fire, Jack leaning his head into her hand where she’s carding her fingers through his hair.

“You’re very quiet, my love.” She remarks, pressing her lips to his temple. “Is something wrong?”

“Nah.” Jack smiles, lazy, his eyes fluttering open to meet hers. “Jus’ tired, sweetheart.”

“Aw, poor baby.” She teases, smoothing his hair down.

“Shuddup.” Jack laughs, pinching her side, then settling her more comfortably against him.

Companionable silence falls over the room again, nothing new for them, of course, but there’s something different in it tonight, a hesitancy, perhaps, in the way that Jack is staring into the fire, burning bright and hot to heat the room through the December chill.

Katherine frowns. “You’re sure that nothing is wrong?”

Jack’s eyes flick to hers, just for a moment, then return to the fire. He swallows heavily, almost guilty, somehow, before he says: “Jus’… you. Travellin’ so far, on your own, nobody to help you out? I don’ like it.”

Katherine freezes. She told him, she bloody told him, before he married her, that she wouldn’t just give everything up to be the perfect little housewife. And he has the cheek, now, to try and control her? No, it’s too much to bear.

“You wouldn’t be saying these things if I was a man.”

“No,” Jack replies, his tone low and smooth, “‘cos ‘f you was a man you wouldn’t be carryin’ our baby into the middle o’ a strike.”

“I’m pregnant, Jack, not an invalid-“ She snaps, making to get up off his lap.

“Hell, Ace, I _know_.” Jack says, tightening the arm that’s wrapped around her waist and holding her to him, taking her hand with his free one. “But I love you, an’ I worry ‘bout you, an’ I wasn’t goin’ to say nothin’ ‘cos I don’ wanta hold you back, but you asked.”

And, well, when he says it like that. She softens and Jack sees it, well-versed, now, in the little tells she has. He brings her hand, still in his, up to his mouth, pressing a kiss to her knuckles.

“Hey.” She reaches up, strokes his face, revels in the way that he leans into her touch now instead of flinching away from it. “I promised you I wasn’t going to leave you alone, didn’t I? I’ll come back to you, Jack, whole. I promise. It’s only a few days.”

“I know.” Jack nods, miserably resigned, his head hitting the back of the chair with a soft thump. “I jus’… don’ like bein’ wi’out you.”

“I’m going to miss you too, you know.” She tells him, rubbing her thumb over his cheekbone. “I’ll call you, I bet I’ll be able to find a phone and call you at work.” Jack nods his head, then turns, pressing a kiss into the palm of her hand.

“I’s real proud o’ you, y’know. I ain’t happy ‘bout all this,” he waves a hand vaguely in the air, “goin’ off wi’out me. But, I’s proud o’ you. Glad you’s got what you wanted.”

She wraps her arms around him, fierce, loving. “This assignment _is_ what I wanted. But I didn’t _need_ it. I’m happy just the way things are.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this chapter is shit. And I’m sorry. I swear the next one gets better. Comments, as always, make my day. 
> 
> The scene with Peter was inspired writetheniteaway’s comment about how Jack and Katherine’s child definitely came about because of magic and not anything untoward, because I found it hilarious. Thank you so much for that. (The ‘you ate the baby’ bit was because that was my reaction as a child. Thanks, Aspergers Syndrome, for ensuring that I always take everything far too literally. At least it provides fuel for the fandom’s amusement.)


	52. Chapter 52

Jack insists on taking her to the train station the following morning, despite it involving him getting up half an hour before he would normally have done. He gets onto the train with her, ostensibly to put her carpet bag in the overhead luggage rack for her and get her settled in her compartment, but mainly because Jack’s never actually been on a train before and if he’s going to commit his wife and unborn child to this black smoke producing machine, then he sure as hell wants to check it out first. Well, to say that he has never been on a train would be a lie, but he’s never been _in_ one. When he was younger, he and some of the other boys from the tenements would make a game of jumping onto the sides of the freight trains, clinging on like monkeys as the engines chuffed their way through the city to deliver coal to the metalworks. Some of the coalmen got too good at spotting them and they’d had to start riding the back carriages, as if they got too close to the engine then they would get swiped at with the coal shovel. The whistle blows. He has to leave. Katherine does nothing more than peck at his lips and he’s almost disappointed until she pulls him into this fierce hug, like she can’t bear to let him go.

Katherine watches out of the window until she can’t see him waving from the platform anymore, until he’s turned into nothing more than a dot in the distance, and then she watches a little longer, as if the act of watching might bring him closer. The window is still wet from the rain they’ve had overnight, but the morning’s bright sunlight throws each droplet into every colour of the rainbow. Katherine takes it as the promise that she believes it to be.

The day feels decidedly less promising when she falls into bed in the little station hotel that night. She’s sore after having been sat down for so long, her body unused to the lack of movement. It’s pleasant, of course, to have so much time for reading, seeing as the train journey allows for little else, but it feels odd, still. Her and Jack had started _David Copperfield_ last week and it’s almost like a betrayal to be reading on without him, even though he’s said that it’s fine. She lies in the cold, lumpy hotel bed, one hand resting on her stomach, wishing that she could see stars on the ceiling.

The next day brings with it the promise of her destination, though it’s difficult to get excited about such things when she’s slept so poorly. After only a few months of marriage, she’s found herself incapable of sleeping soundly without Jack lying beside her, so she’s got about two hours of disrupted sleep and a serious case of bedhead when she sets off that morning.

By the time the train chugs into the station at Dallas, Katherine has long since finished _David Copperfield_ and moved on to _Jane Eyre,_ an old favourite. Looking out of the window, there is a city of flat-roofed buildings and arched windows spread out before her, so very different to New York. Katherine is well-travelled, of course, but this is different. She is alone, travelling for work, heralding a new era in which lady reporters write the hard news. _Let them stare_ , she thinks, as she steps off the train, several people sending sly glances her way at her lack of a chaperone. At eleven o’clock tomorrow morning, she will be reporting on the strike. For now, however, it’s probably best to find her hotel.

The hotel in Dallas is substantially nicer than the little station hotel, with a lobby of cool marble and crisp white sheets on the bed. The bed, however, is still far too large for her and her alone. She goes down to the lobby, purse in hand, to call Jack on the telephone, but then remembers that it’s six pm and he won’t be at work anymore. He’ll be at home, in their home, where there is no telephone. Where there’s no way for her to reach him. She goes back to her room and sits on the bed.

It shouldn’t bother her this much, being away from him. It’s not like they spent every day together before they were married. But there’s something comforting about knowing that he’s close by, only a few blocks walk away should she need him. She’s never had to, of course, but she might. _It’s only a few days. Right._

The next morning, Katherine sets her shoulders and walks through Dallas, notebook and pencil in hand, ready to face a new century, and tries to let the blatant stares of work-roughened men and demure, chaperoned ladies run off her shoulders like water. The smaller railroad station where the strike is due to kick off, however, is a little underwhelming for such an occasion, a low wooden building that squats beside the tracks and smells strongly of coal-tar creosote, so much so that Katherine tries her very best not to let her skirts brush against the walls. An awning supported by half-rotting fence posts stretches out over something resembling a platform, a few raised boards beside the track, shielding those stood beneath it from the sun, bright and warm even in December.

There are fewer people, certainly fewer reporters, than she expected, certainly, but Mr. Ross had said that this was an exclusive. Yet, two men feels uncomfortably exclusive. They stand outside, one of them older, moustachioed and a little hunched, the other a tall, younger man, with the same kind of scruff that Jack gets when he forgets to shave for a couple of days, too caught up in his art. Both of them wear working men’s clothes, cheap suits and sweat-stained cotton shirts with neckerchiefs instead of ties, their heads bowed in quiet conversation. Katherine takes a deep breath and walks up to them.

“Excuse me, might one of you be a Mr. Dolphin?”

The younger man peers at her from beneath the brim of his hat with dark eyes, then pulls the cigarette out from between his teeth to answer. “Depends who’s askin’.”

“Katherine Plumber, reporter for the New York Sun _._ ” She sticks her hand out for him to shake, tilting her chin up to look him dead in the eye.

He doesn’t take her hand, instead swearing under his breath and casting a disbelieving look at his silent companion. “This has gotta be some sorta joke.”

“I assure you,” Katherine tightens her jaw, dropping her hand, “I’m perfectly serious about my identity, sir.”

The ‘sir’ ought to make her sound more polite, but it doesn’t, it makes her sound angry. Unlucky for her, the dark-eyed man also seems pretty angry, looking up at the sky as if he’s appealing to some higher power.

“When I tipped the paper off,” he growls, “I asked for the Plumber who wrote the newsboy strike article. Not some flower show reviewer.”

“I _am_ the Plumber who wrote the article about the newsboy strike.” Katherine purses her lips. “And _you_ never answered my question. Are you Mr. Dolphin?”

The man looks down at her as if she’s just slapped him across the face, clearly unused to disrespect, never mind from a woman. A muscle in his jaw clenches, his eyes roving down over her form in a way that makes her feel dirty and unpleasantly seen.

“Michael Dolphin.” He says finally, jerking his chin to dismiss the other man who promptly slopes away. Michael leans against one of the dusty posts supporting the station awning, not taking his eyes from her. “An’ I s’pose you’ll have to do. What you want to know, then?”

 _You’ll have to do. The cheek!_ “Whatever you’ll tell me. Let’s start with why you’re striking.”

“It started with the wage scale – shit, it is.” Katherine resists the urge to admonish him for his language. “An’ then, when they refused to budge on it, we said we want rules changin’. Like, a limit on how long men are workin’. It’s dangerous for them to work a twelve-hour shift – that’s how derailments happen. Anyway, they’ve agreed to arbitrate the wage scale, but nothin’s changin’ regardin’ the rules, so we’re strikin’, as of eleven o’clock today.”

Katherine lets her pen fly across the page of her notebook, brain already whirling with all the possible angles to approach a story like this. Facts, first, she decides, for what she’ll send back by telegram this afternoon, then, when she’s home, a proper opinion piece, appeal to people’s empathy, yes, the thought of an overworked man so tired that he falls asleep at the controls and causes a derailment. She can paint that picture with her words – maybe even ask Jack for some sort of gruesome illustration to go with it, really sell the whole thing -

“Did you really write the newsboy strike article?” The man in front of her asks and she finally looks back up at him, her first page already full of her scribbles.

“I did. Did you really ask for me specifically?”

“Of course.”

She’s flattered, of course, that others think her work is good. However, she realises, that opinion piece that she’s planning will never happen. Mr. Ross wants the bare facts, nothing more. There’s no room for her in this, no room for what she wants to say in the papers. They’re too fleeting. Like the strikes, they spark revolution, but the papers don’t fan the flames. No, that’s done by books, speakers, thinkers whose ideas stay in the public sphere longer than a day.

“The newsboys did pretty well off the backa that article, didn’t they?” Michael comments, drawing her out of her thoughts. “We want a piece’a that.”

The insinuation about Jack and the others riles her. Sure, that article was some of the best work of her career, not only because it brought her the family she’s always wanted, but the newsies would have figured something out, she’s sure. Probably not something that would have worked so well, sure, but she was just the push they needed for the finish line. She knows that Jack would say different, of course, but that’s beside the point. She juts her chin out.

“The newsboys would have won with or without my article. They’re good men.”

Michael raises his eyebrows, pulling off his hat. “You don’t seem much like the kinda girl who’d associate with newsboys.”

“Comments on my social status have little to do with the strike, Mr. Dolphin;” she says tartly, returning pen to paper, “what do you hope to achieve?”

“We’ve already got what we wanted, really. With the wages an’ everything. This is just to keep them on their toes, getting’ the rules changed would just be a bonus.” He says it like it doesn’t matter, none of the passion that she’s come to expect from union leaders. That said, Katherine’s experience is limited to Jack and Davey, and they’re hardly representative. Then, suddenly, startlingly, there are fingers on her face, ones with soft pads, nothing like Jack’s calloused ones, brushing across her cheek. She jerks away. “Is that a burn scar?”

“That is none of your business.” Katherine says, shooting her interviewee a sour look, trying not to give into the temptation of running over to the nearby water pump to wash the residue of his fingers off her skin. She rather wishes that her voice sounded more forceful and less scared.

“Pretty girl like you, with a scar like that?” He smirks. “It’s interestin’ business, nonetheless. Those newsboys a bit too rough and tumble for you?”

 _Get this back on track, Katherine. Get this over with. Get out of here._ “How widespread is the strike going to be?” Pen, poised. She shifts the hand she’s using to hold her notebook, clearly displaying her wedding ring, dull gold glinting in the sunlight, heavy and comforting on her finger. It calms her, regulating her pulse, evening out her heartbeat.

“Gulf, Colorado, Santa Fe –“ Michael rolls his eyes, “- don’t you have enough for your article, already?”

Katherine looks down at her page, nods, flips the notebook shut, turns to leave. “I think so. Thank you for your time, Mr. Dolphin.”

He lunges forward, clasps hold of her wrist a little too hard, those fingertips now digging into her skin. “Hey now –“

Katherine takes a deep breath, looks over her shoulder at him, speaks in as firm a voice as she can muster. “Please let go of me.” He doesn’t. If anything, his grip gets tighter. Her heart beats faster. Her other hand comes to rest on her stomach before she can even think about it.

“- we’ve got another twenty minutes before the strike starts. I want to hear the story behind that scar.” He increases the pressure on her wrist, pulling her a little closer, leering. She can smell tobacco on his breath, nose-wrinklingly strong. “Unless you’ve got another story that you’d rather tell me.”

“I don’t think my husband would appreciate the way that you’re speaking to me.”

Jack had been right, of course he had been, damnit, he’d been right to be worried. And yes, she can handle herself, of course she can, but this – this is scary. If this was happening in New York, she’d feel safer, somewhere familiar, Jack to run and find, or one of the newsies no more than a street away. _Damnit, where’s Jack when you need him?_

Michael tilts his head to the side, almost amused, as if she’s some kitten that he’s toying with. “I don’t think your husband should be letting a pretty girl like you run around on her own.”

“My husband is not my keeper.” She spits, flexing her wrist, trying to yank it from his grip.

“Then he doesn’t need to know about this, then, does he? I want to hear the story.” The man pulls her closer. Katherine feels terror, ice-cold, run down her back. Is nobody around? Is nobody watching? Does nobody care?

 _Firm, Katherine, firm._ “I want you to let go of my wrist.”

As she does so, she stamps very, very hard on his foot, driving the tip of her heel into the man’s toes. It’s not enough to hurt him properly, but it’s enough for him to loosen his grip on her wrist, and for her to stumble backwards, away from him, back into the street, where they aren’t shielded by the awning, where they aren’t alone.

Michael looks momentarily enraged, before schooling his features into something distasteful. “Should have known you’d have a stick up your ass.”

“No,” Katherine responds, with more bravery than she feels, “but I do have self-respect.”

There’s a café across the street where she goes in and waits for the strike to be called, announced with the toll of a bell, rung by that odious President Dolphin, and a telegraph message. She watches through the window, a fresh notebook page set before her, the final draft half-written. Katherine orders a second drink, feeling safer, somehow, in the presence of the kindly old lady behind the counter who chats away to her in a Texas drawl.

When the strike is over, Dolphin walking away with nothing more than a lip-curled glance at the café opposite, and the article is written, which takes a good part of the afternoon, the old lady (who, Katherine has by this point discovered, is named Rebecca, has a husband and four children, one of which has just had a baby of their own, a little girl named Olive, which is, in Rebecca’s opinion, the worst possible name for a little girl that could ever be chosen; Katherine asks what she thinks about the name Lucy, basking in the praise that Rebecca lavishes upon the choice) gives her directions to the post office, where she hands over the article to the telegram operator and asks to pay to use the phone.

After a long time waiting on the operator, the voice of Miss Rhodes crackles down the line. Katherine has to wait another absolute age, listening to the pale buzzing of the empty line, before there’s a rustling and there he is, it’s his voice, faint but utterly unmistakable.

“Ace! How’s the strike?”

It’s an effort to get the words out, choked up with relief at the sound of his voice. She wants to tell him everything, cry down the phone because she’s lonely and underestimated and there’s a circle of purple bruising around her wrist. But she doesn’t, because this assignment is the second-best thing ever to happen to her career and he’ll only worry. It’s not like this strike was anything like the newsies’ one. No violence. No people, really. “I’ve got everything for my article. I’ve just sent it, so I should be on my way home tomorrow, all being well.”

“I’ll get to see your article on the front page o’ tomorrow’s Sun, then?”

“So long as Mr. Ross doesn’t tear it to pieces.”

“I’ll buy twenty copies.”

“One will do just fine.” _He’s ridiculous._ “I miss you.”

“I miss you too. Hey, ‘s just a few days, right?”

“Yes, just a few days.” _Just a few days._ She stays silent for a moment, listening to the faint sounds of his breathing on the other end of the line, comforting and rhythmic. Eventually, she laughs, soft. “This call is going to get terribly expensive.”

“Worth it to hear your voice.”

His response is instant and she rolls her eyes. “You’re a sap.”

“You love it.” 

“I love _you_.” Bloody hell, it doesn’t matter whether it’s the pregnancy hormones, she will _not_ start crying in the middle of a post office. “I’ll be home soon, okay?”

She can almost hear the smile in his voice when he says: “I love you too.”

When, a few hours later, an errand boy drops by the hotel with a telegram for her from Mr. Ross that says her article is ‘satisfactory’ ( _the cheek!_ ) Katherine packs like a woman possessed. Chasing stories is fun, she decides, but going home is better.

It makes her wonder if this is really what she wants, constantly fighting against harassment and having her efforts deemed only satisfactory. She wants to write, of course she does, but there must be other ways to do it. Flipping to the back of her notebook, she reads back hastily scribbled lines of dialogue, descriptions of her favourite places around New York, of the swans on the pond near the Jacobs’ apartment, of the grey façade of the lodgehouse, of the cheerful, white-painted windows of their home. What if the things she always thought she wanted aren’t what she wants anymore? She knows that Jack will support her no matter what, but will she be letting herself down if she decides that this isn’t the life she wants, cavorting halfway across the country, heart aching and wrist bruised, away from her family? Daisy, Race, Davey? Even, perhaps, Miriam now, having exchanged addresses and agreed to write? Jack? Her Jack? Their child?

The strike, if anything, was underwhelming. That’s what you get, she supposes, when it’s men working desk jobs spread out across the nation and not a band of raucous newsboys. There was no violence, no shattering shop windows, no punches thrown (though she wouldn’t have objected to seeing Mr. Dolphin get a few of his teeth knocked out, if she’s totally honest). But she’s still scared. Travelling across the country alone? It’s scary. Being manhandled like that? Terrifying. Nobody has ever laid a hand on her like that before. She’s done what she wanted to do now, proved her point, carried the banner. She has led the fight. Maybe now it’s time for her to step back. Not necessarily something safer, but more stable. She can still make a difference close to home.

She read a book by Charles Darwin, recently, about evolution. Maybe that’s what she has to do; evolve. Maybe it’s not giving up on her dreams. Maybe it’s just changing with them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The roughly 1500 miles between Dallas and New York would have taken around two days train journey to cover with the speed and availability of trains at the time. It was unusual but not unheard of for a woman to travel alone at this time (Katherine’s journey being explained by her being specifically requested by an oblivious Mr. Dolphin), however Mr. Ross would have had to call ahead and book Katherine’s hotel rooms as unaccompanied women could not, at that time, just casually book in to any reputable hotel without a husband/brother/father to back them up. A Mr. M. M. Dolphin was the president of the Order of Railroad Telegraphers and did call the strike. I haven’t been able to find out his real first name, but Michael seemed a likely choice and I honestly don’t really care – by all accounts he was as unlikable as how I’ve portrayed him here. All historical details regarding wage scale arbitration and regulations are historically accurate; I read ‘The Order of Railroad Telegraphers: A Study in Trade Unionism and Collective Bargaining’ to make sure they were right, so don’t say I’m not committed. 
> 
> Comments are greatly appreciated :)


	53. Chapter 53

Jack hadn’t been expecting to be quite this much of a mess while Katherine is away, but here he is. He’s fine so long as he’s at work, he reckons, so he stays late Tuesday night, and then Wednesday night too, churning out cartoons and illustrations at a rate that he’d never manage if he was feeling somewhere close to sane. He doesn’t eat much, or sleep much, or do much of anything other than work and worry and scratch at the back of his neck until it bleeds. On Thursday he gets the call from Katherine, Mrs. Rhodes shooting him indulgent smiles from behind her desk as he presses the receiver to his ear to hear her voice crackling down the long-distance line. He walks about with a ridiculous grin on his face for the rest of the day, gets ribbed about it by Walter and Daniel, and doesn’t even care.

The next day he stops by Elmer’s selling spot to grab a copy of the Sun; Elmer just smirks at him and tells him that it’s on the front page. Jack forces himself to walk around the corner before scanning the paper for the article, burying his nose in the newsprint, squinting at the swirling words, determined to push through and gobble them all up, because they are Katherine’s words, and he’s pretty sure he can do anything for her.

**RAILROAD TELEGRAPHERS STRIKE**

**Practically All the Operators on the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Leave Their Keys.**

Jack knows, of course he does, that Katherine is merely reporting the truth of the matter, she’s too ethical to do anything otherwise. Still, he can’t help but feel like she’s writing this article directly to him, the inclusion of Santa Fe in the subheading a calling out across a thousand miles, as blatant as his name being written between the lines.

_DALLAS, Tex., Dec. 6 – At 11 o’clock this morning a strike of telegraphers on the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railroad system in Texas was begun. President Dolphin of the Order of Railway Telegraphers ordered the strike and the men quit their keys from Galveston, Tex., to Purrell, Indian Territory, on the main line, and also on all the branches. One man only remained at work in Dallas._

That, Jack thinks, must be the telegrapher who is sending Katherine’s train steaming back home to him. Despite the man clearly being a scabber for not participating in the strike, he can’t help but feel a little grateful to him.

_The disagreement between the company and the telegraphers originally was over the wage scale. The company finally agreed to arbitrate the wage scale, but declined to arbitrate as to rules and regularions. This last issue precipitated the strike, which was held off nearly ten days by negotiations. A bulletin to-night from Temple, one of the most important points on the Santa Fe system, says: “All went out but two or three from here to Galveston. All are out on the San Angelo branch and the same on the two lines to the north. The Santa Fe is running only regular passenger trains. The despatchers are reported to-night to have gone out also. Only two men are at the office in this city and one of these is a policeman.” The strike involves over 600 telegraphers._

He’s so bloody proud of her; he wishes that she were here so that he could tell her. But she’s on her way home to him, safe and sound, so he goes about his day with a smile on his face as wide as the Hudson River and calls by the hardware store on his way home to buy some new paints.

When he gets home, Jack scarfs down a couple of slices of toast as fast as he can, then puts on his old painting clothes and sets to work in the little empty bedroom, shifting the bed against the side wall and out of the way. They won’t need it in here for very much longer, he supposes, and wonders how they’re going to get rid of it once it needs replacing with a crib. The thought thrills him, a little full-body shudder. Jack grabs a pencil, takes it to the wall and begins to plan.

By the time that the front door opens downstairs and he hears Davey call out his name, Jack has finished the background.

“Upstairs!” Jack calls out, listening for David’s footfalls on the stairs. 

“Woah.” Davey stops in the doorway, staring at the wall. “Jack, this is amazing.”

The mural is unfinished, a jungle background in a wash of green, trees climbing up the wall, with the pencil outlines of tigers, tropical birds, and monkeys just visible beneath the paint, ready to be filled in. It will be beautiful, David can already tell, can already imagine a tiny version of Jack pointing to the animals and naming them. He’s never seen a nursery quite like it, but he sure as hell knows that if he ever has children then Jack is painting their rooms for them.

“Take it easy, ‘s jus’ a bunch o’ trees.” He shrugs, handing Davey a can of paint to hold for him. “You alright?”

“Oh, yeah,” David stammers, moving along as Jack works his way across the expanse of wall, holding out the can, “uh, when can Miriam and I come for dinner again?”

“Traditionally, you’s s’posed to wait until you’s invited.”

“Yes, well, I want to spend more time with her and she had a really nice time on Monday – thank you for that, by the way – and she said that she’d like to spend the evenin’ like that again.”

Jack blinks, stops painting, turns. “Y’know that she doesn’t mean me an’ Kath, right?”

Davey frowns. “But-“

“She wants to spend the evenin’ wi’ you again, you idiot.”

“Oh.”

“That’s ‘bout as obvious an invitation as you’s goin’ to get, Dave.” Jack rolls his eyes, turning back to the wall. “She might as well wave her hands in the air an’ shout _court me!_ ”

“Are you _sure_?”

“You’s so dim, sometimes, y’know that?”

David is quiet for a moment, processing. “So… how do I ask to court her?”

“Y’jus’ asks.”

“That’s incredibly unhelpful.” Davey frowns. “How did you ask Kath?”

Jack has to hold back a laugh. He’s grateful that he didn’t ask Katherine outright, honestly, because despite his many less than subtle hints that he found her incredibly attractive, he’s pretty sure that such a candid question would have gotten him slapped and not much else. No, they’d fallen into this, more or less, something that he never thought would happen to him, as good things don’t usually come his way without some sort of catch. Still, he’s not complaining.

“I didn’t. She kissed me first.”

“Wha- well that’s not fair!”

“Look,” Jack sighs, “jus’ walk up to her, an’ say _d’you wanta go to dinner wi’ me on Friday night?_ ”

“I can’t do that,” Davey frowns, “we both observe Shabbat.”

“Pete’s sake, Davey,” Jack cries, despairing of his friend entirely and sending paint flying off his brush, luckily onto the dust sheet and not where he’s just been painting, “it don’t hafta be a Friday!”

“Isn’t that a bit indirect?” Davey wrinkles his nose. “What if she thinks we’re goin’ to dinner as friends?”

Jack picks up a smaller paintbrush and begins to outline a parrot perched on one of the lower branches. “Ask to kiss her at the end o’ the night an’ she’ll figure it out pretty quick.”

“I can’t do that!”

David’s eyes go very big and very wide. He certainly can’t do that. What if he does it wrong? What if he bumps her with his nose? (He’s not stupid, Rawlings keeps telling him that his is enormous, though he doesn’t much care about what Rawlings says so long as he doesn’t try to break it again.) What if she doesn’t want him to kiss her and Jack has completely misread the situation?

“Well, ‘s better than not askin’.” Jack shrugs. He’s tried that a couple of times, kissing a girl without asking her first, and whilst occasionally it’s worked out for him, he’s come to the general conclusion that asking first is vastly preferable and much less likely to end with him getting slapped.

“No, I mean… kiss her.”

Jack turns back to him, really slowly, raising one eyebrow with a glimmer of amusement in his eyes and on his lips. “You’s never kissed a girl?”

David flushes, his voice a little irate. “I’ve had more important things on my mind!”

Jack has to hold back a snicker at the way Davey’s face turns fire-hydrant red. He’s so close to ribbing him endlessly for this; he probably would, in all honesty, if it wasn’t for the way that Davey had treated him when he came to him for help with his spelling and his numbers. David hadn’t said anything about him being stupid. He probably shouldn’t either, so he bites his lip. Honestly, that kid. He can organise a union, but, oh no, kissing a girl is too much of a challenge for him. David looks like he can’t decide whether to drop to the floor in misery or tell Jack off for being a smartass, so Jack takes pity on him.

“Look, kissin’ is easy.” He says, ditching his paintbrush in the can of paint and taking it from Davey’s hand to set it on the floor (mainly because the poor kid looks like he’s about to drop it). He sets his paint-stained hands on Davey’s shoulders, utterly unconcerned with the state of the boy’s clothes, and looks him in the eyes. “Don’ use your teeth, don’ headbutt her, and use your tongue like ‘s hot soup an’ not a fuckin’ ice cream.”

Davey nods, a little frantic, through most of it, right up until the end. Jack should have known the food simile was too far. “Wha-“

“Less is more, wi’ tongue, ‘s what I mean.” He clarifies, taking his hands off Davey’s shoulders and returning them to the brush.

“This is goin’ to go terribly.” Davey groans, rubbing his hands over his face. And the kid calls _him_ melodramatic, Jack thinks.

“Dave, she likes you. Jus’ ask, no more o’ your gripin’.” Jack snatches up a paintbrush and thrusts it at the other boy. “You wants to stay, you can do the cuttin’ in by the skirtin’ boards.”

…

Jack wakes up on Saturday morning with just one thought in his head. Today is the day that Katherine is coming home. (Yes, he knows that he’s pathetic and utterly codependent. No, it’s not going to put a downer on his mood.) Except, she doesn’t.

Jack spends the whole day finishing off the mural and working on commissions, too jittery to leave the house in case she comes back and he isn’t home and she thinks that he doesn’t care. _It’s fine,_ he tells himself, _two days is an average. Maybe the train got held up. Maybe she’ll get in tomorrow. Or Monday, if the trains aren’t all running on a Sunday. She’s fine._ Except he doesn’t quite believe it. The hours on the clock tick by, and his leg judders up and down as he sits in the armchair. It’s decidedly more comfortable without Katherine squashed into it as well, but decidedly less pleasant.

Nine pm rolls around. Jack rolls his shoulders. Gets up. _She’ll probably arrive tomorrow. You’ll see_. He goes upstairs, turns off the lights, lies down in bed. Going through the motions. He looks up at the stars on the ceiling. Could Katherine see the stars properly in Texas, he wonders? You can see them in New York, sometimes, but it’s rare with all the streetlamps clouding them. He used to see them more when he was sleeping in his penthouse, which makes him wonder if the mural on their ceiling is as much to make him feel like he’s outside and unrestricted as it is to quell Katherine’s fear of him leaving for Santa Fe.

A noise, downstairs. Every muscle in Jack’s body tenses. They used to listen out for those noises in the Refuge, the harbingers of the guards’ so-called night raids, impromptu beatings that came upon them as surprise punishment for unknown wrongdoing. He tries to settle himself, tell himself that it’s not the bulls, that it’s not Snyder, that it’s just a mouse. No, that is definitely the front door opening. One of the newsies, perhaps.

Swinging himself out of bed, he sets off to investigate, creaking down the stairs and flipping on the light switch. And there she is. Tired, travel-weary, blinking against the sudden burst of light, hauling a carpet bag in through the door, _his._

“Kath.” He breathes, prayerful, disbelieving. And then he’s on her, sweeping her into his arms, breathing her in, making sure she’s real.

“Missed you.” She mumbles against his skin.

God, she’s missed him? Does she know how badly he’s missed her? He drops his head to her shoulder, turns it, presses his face into her neck, smelling the lavender-sweetness of her skin, the undercut of sweat from a day’s travelling that smells the same as after they’ve been together. His lips find her pulse point, not kissing or sucking, just there, against it, feeling her heart beat, her blood pump, counting it, memorising it, etching her body into his skin.

“I bought the pape,” he says, pulling back, cradling that beautiful face of hers in his hands, “your article was wonderful. So proud o’ you.”

A smile that splits her face in two. She’s back. “I don’t want to go away for a story again.” Her words come out matter-of-fact, convinced, in a way that she hadn’t been expecting but that just feels unbelievably right. She’s back where she belongs, she doesn’t want to leave again.

“What?” Jack frowns, his forehead creasing. “But, sweetheart, you was so excited?”

“I enjoyed it.” She assures him, eyes and smile bright, her hands running over his chest, fisting themselves in the rough cotton of his undershirt because he’s here for her to cling onto. “I just… once was enough. I want to do more, to write something bigger, and I want to do it from here. I like being with you – it’s taken me so long to find somewhere where I fit in, I don’t want to keep leaving it.”

She doesn’t know if she makes sense – hell, it hardly makes sense to her, this strange epiphany, this sudden absence of ambition and realisation of contentment. No, no, she hasn’t lost her ambition, it’s just shifted. And that’s normal, isn’t it? She’s praying it’s normal. Jack realised that Santa Fe wasn’t his dream, so she can realise that journalistic fame isn’t hers, can’t she? She should feel ashamed, she knows, but she can’t bring herself to, not when he’s looking at her like that, like she’s fallen down from heaven and into his hands.

Jack nods, slow, like he understands even though he probably doesn’t. Sometimes, with Katherine, it isn’t necessary for him to understand, just to trust. She does that with him, with his nightmares, after all. He is more than willing to return the favour. So he nods, like he understands, then tells her:

“I’s got somethin’ to show you.”

He leads her up the stairs, then steps behind her to cover her eyes with his hands, guiding her forwards. She laughs and teases him, but lets herself be led, nudged forward by his chest at her back, his words informing her steps, keeping her from harm. And then he takes his hands away, and for a moment she believes that he’s walked them through some portal right into the middle of the jungle.

“Thought it’d help the little one learn their animals.” Jack smiles, wrapping his arms around her middle, one hand resting carefully on the soft, almost undetectable swell of her belly. “After that book you read the other week, The Jungle Book-“

She spins in his arms, kisses him, her hands on his face. “It’s perfect.” When she pulls away through, she frowns. Under her thumbs, Jack’s cheekbones are just a touch sharper than usual, his face a little thinner, gaunter. “You’ve lost weight.”

“I ain’t been eatin’ too much.” Jack shrugs. “Jus’ worried.” God help her, she’s melting.

“Come on, then. Let’s get you something to eat and then we’ll go to bed, hm?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The article is taken word for word from the front page of the New York Sun published on Friday, December 7th, 1900. There was no author given for that particular article, so I feel safe in assigning it to Katherine. Also, this fic is now longer than the longest Harry Potter book. I'm so sorry.
> 
> Comments, as always, make my day.


	54. Chapter 54

Katherine _had_ intended to be the one who picked up Edith from the station. She honestly had. But then work had got in the way, and Mr. Ross wanted the article ready for the next day, and well, Jack had offered, of course he had. Which is how Jack ends up being the one waiting at Grand Central Station for Edith on the 22nd of December, shoving his hands deep in his trouser pockets because he’s pretty sure there’s some sort of universal rule that train stations always and everywhere have to be completely freezing. He’s aware that he looks a bit odd, not old enough to be Edith’s father, not alike enough to be her brother, and certainly not of her class. Even in his neat grey suit, Jack knows that there’s something about the way that he carries himself that marks him out as fundamentally different from the Pulitzers, even if he can’t seem to quite pin it down.

He spots her pretty quick though, and she actually returns his wave, even if hers is more of a hand raised in acknowledgement rather than enthusiasm. She greets him pretty pleasantly though, and he picks up her trunk, startled by the weight of it, wondering whether she’s decided to bring her school’s kitchen sink along with her for good measure. Jack’s about to make a joke out of it when a policeman, lounging by the information desk, approaches them.

Now, Jack’s been pardoned – by Governor Roosevelt no less – but the sight of one of the bulls never fails to make his skin crawl and his heart race. He remembers the feel of their hands on him too well, the way they slammed his head into tiled walls, blood spatters on grimy white, the searing pain of their truncheons coming down on his back. Running will do him no good, Jack knows, the policeman is too close. Running now would make him look guilty. He stands up very straight and tries to swallow down the panic that’s rising in his throat. Surely they won’t arrest him in front of Edith? Have he and Katherine got enough saved up for bail?

“Excuse me, sir.” The word ‘sir’ should make Jack feel respected, but the way that this policeman says it, cold, assessing, just feels mocking. “What relation have you to the young lady?” Jack shifts infinitesimally away from Edith and opens his mouth to explain. _No cheek, Kelly, just get out of this and go home._

“He is my brother-in-law,” Edith cuts in, beating him to it and jutting her chin out, the very spitting image of Katherine when she’s angry, “and I don’t see what business it is of yours when you are not questioning anybody else. Kindly step aside.”

The policeman looks down at Edith, taken aback, but nods, finally, shooting Jack a glare as he does so. “Very good, Miss.”

They’re not quite out of earshot when she exclaims: “The cheek!”

“He was lookin’ out for your best interests, Edith.” Jack replies, sending a nervous glance over his shoulder. The policeman might have heard her. It’s not a good idea to insult a policeman. The last time he insulted a policeman, he ended up with two broken fingers and a bloody lip.

“He was judging the company I was keeping.” Edith sniffs, nose in the air. “Seeing as yours and Katherine’s is the only offer of hospitality I’ve received, this Christmas, I rather think he is judging the wrong people.”

And, well, this is quite the turnaround from the Edith that Jack had come across at their wedding just a few months ago. Maybe she’s done a whole lot of growing up while none of them were looking. Or maybe he just hadn’t bothered to see beyond the snobby little girl before.

“You ain’t heard from your parents?”

“Mother, yes,” Edith shrugs, as if it doesn’t bother her in the slightest, “but she doesn’t want me interfering with Constance’s education by coming to stay and the day Father answers a letter from me will be the day when Hannah feels so sorry for me that she forges a reply.”

“Ah.” Jack sighs. That sounds familiar. As far as he knows, Katherine has been too proud to so much as write to either of her parents since before their wedding, but he knows that it hurts her still, sometimes, when she has some great achievement with her career. Even though she knows her father would only have found fault in whatever article it is, that her mother would have been thoroughly uninterested, he can see it in her eyes as she stares at the newsprint. He coughs, tries to think of something else to say. “Your room ain’t the nicest, ‘cos we’s halfway through turnin’ it into a nursery-“

“A nursery?” Edith stops in her tracks, stock still in the middle of the pavement.

“Ain’t Kath told you?” Jack turns around, a few steps ahead of her, blinking. “We’s havin’ a baby.”

There’s a long pause, something unreadable flitting across Edith’s face. Eventually, she shakes her head. “No. She hasn’t said anything.”

“Ah.” Jack winces. “I think I mighta spoiled a surprise.”

“That’s okay.” Edith says, though it doesn’t sound very okay at all. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks.”

They start walking again. Edith looks straight ahead of them. “How far along is she?”

“Uh,” Jack scratches at the back of his neck with his free hand, “she got this book from the library wi’ a development chart, an’ we thinks she’s thirteen or fourteen weeks. Not sure though, she ain’t showin much yet.”

“That is very… quick.” Edith shoots him a quick smile that might, in another universe, have looked amused. “You don’t hang around, do you?”

Jack laughs, bright and loud. “It ain’t exactly what we planned, but we’s excited.”

“I always thought Katherine would make a good mother.” Edith nods, cocking her head to the side a little. “She was always so set on not getting married when we were younger, though, so I didn’t think it would ever happen.”

“I think Kath wanted to get married, she jus’ didn’t wanta be controlled.” Jack shrugs, a lazy smile on his face, the kind that most often rests there when his wife comes up in conversation. “Joke’s on me, Kath ain’t the kinda person I could control ‘f I wanted to.” He shoots a glance at Edith. “You ever want kids, Edie?”

The girl frowns at him. “Edie?”

 _The nickname was too far, Kelly, too familiar. Idiot. She’s a Pulitzer, and not one like Kath._ “Not okay?”

“No, it’s okay. Just… different.” Edith replies, a little slowly, then coughs, returning to his question. “I think so. It will rather depend on what my husband wants, I suppose.”

“There ain’t no duty to give a bloke kids.” Jack remarks. “‘S up to you. He’s gotta marry you ‘cos he wants you, not what you can or can’t give him.”

“If only it were that simple.”

“It can be. ‘F you find the right guy.”

“I believe Father already has his eye on someone for me.” Edith tells him, blunt and dispassionate. “I don’t imagine I will get much choice in the matter.”

Jack’s head spins a little. Edith’s, what, fourteen? “Already?”

“Mr. William Moore.” She nods. “His grandfather wrote The Night Before Christmas. Their family is very wealthy.”

“An’… is he nice? This William?”

“I’ve never met him. Nothing is official, of course, but his father has expressed interest in him partnering with Ralph in the newspaper business once he finishes university.”

It’s so far beyond anything Jack’s ever known, this idea of courtship as some sort of business venture. Of course, there’s more than just love to consider in a marriage, there are naturally practicalities. But he can’t imagine having some grown-up deciding his future at fourteen, telling him who he’s going to spend the rest of his life with, who he’s going to raise children with, who he’s going to share a bed with. It’s often hard for him to hear Katherine speak so derisively about her cushy childhood, but he’s starting to see that perhaps it’s not always money that buys freedom. _Surely Edith can’t be happy with this. Surely._

“I know it’s a way off, but… you don’t gotta do nothin’ you don’t wanta.” He says. Jack isn’t good with words, not like Katherine, he doesn’t do big fancy speeches. But the kid has to know. “You’s always got a home wi’ us, y’know that?”

Edith looks at him as if he’s just handed her an impeccably wrapped giftbox, not just said a few brusque words. “Thank you, Jack.”

By the time they get to the house, Jack’s arms are nearly dropping off from carrying the trunk, but he at least doesn’t have to fiddle with the key. He left Daisy tapping away on Katherine’s typewriter in the kitchen when he set off for the train station, so the door is unlocked. It’s not like he needs any more time in this house with those clackety keys drumming into his brain, but after she mentioned how worried she was about getting injured and no longer being able to dance, Katherine had sat Daisy down and helped her to sign up for a secretarial correspondence course, telling her, in no uncertain terms, that she should come over and work at their kitchen table whenever she chose. Hence, whenever Katherine isn’t clacking away, Daisy is usually round filling the kitchen with the noise. It had used to annoy Jack, but he’s so used to it by now that it’s almost comforting, as if the air doesn’t feel quite right without the clatter of keys vibrating through it. Not that he’ll ever tell either of them. They make enough noise as it is.

No, all Jack has to do is press down the handle with his elbow and kick the door open, announcing their arrival in a loud voice and hearing a three-part chorus echoing from the kitchen in response. He can pick out Crutchie and Henry’s voices, along with Daisy’s, though not Davey’s. Shabbat isn’t over yet, of course, but when it is, he’s apparently taking Miriam out for a late dinner. Jack has already been consulted on flirting tactics, suit choice, and ways to not screw the whole thing up, and he honestly won’t be surprised if David turns up the following afternoon to fret his way through a play-by-play account of the entire date like some sort of girl. That, however, is tomorrow’s problem.

“Kath ain’t home from work yet, but this is your room.” Jack says, leading Edith up the stairs and into the guest room/nursery. When he turns around from placing the trunk on the floor, Edith is still standing in the doorway, staring at the jungle scene that spans the entire far wall. Jack winces, hand flying up to rub at the back of his neck. “Sorry ‘bout the mural, ‘s for the baby.”

“Don’t be sorry. It’s beautiful.” Edith says, her voice quiet, wandering over to it and tracing her finger along the strong, supple line of the tiger’s back, almost as if she is expecting to feel soft fur and lean muscle beneath her fingers. The rest of the house might be the shabbiest place she’s ever seen, but this? This isn’t half bad. “Did you paint it?”

“Yeah. Kath was on a work trip, thought I’d surprise her when she got back.” Jack shrugs, backing towards the door, ready to leave her to freshen up or whatever posh ladies are supposed to do after trips. “Uh, don’t be worried ‘f you walks into the livin’ room or the kitchen an’ there’s jus’ random people in there. They’s friends, ‘s jus’ kinda an open house.”

Sure enough, when Edith comes downstairs from having unpacked, Crutchie, Henry, and Daisy are lounging in the kitchen chairs while Jack slides a pie, previously sat ready on the sideboard, into the oven. She remembers them from the wedding – Daisy the best, of course, but the other two as well. Edith is rather proud of her talent for remembering people’s names; it comes in useful at parties. Of all of them, Henry is the most difficult to recall, and it takes her a moment to land on the name of the tall boy, around her age, with sandy brown hair. _Henry_ _, that’s right._

Jack catches sight of her, hesitant in the doorway, almost afraid to step into the kitchen. As she is, she can pretend not to be a part of this, can pretend to be a mere audience member. But then he beckons her in, reminding her of people’s names and snagging a chair out from under the table for her with his foot.

“We’s jus’ waitin’ on Kath for dinner. You likes fish pie, right, Edith?” He asks as she sits down, perching on the wooden chair, unsure of how to sit when the rest of them look so casual, legs spread and backs slumped.

“Yes, thank you.”

Henry groans. “Fish pie, Jack?”

Jack shoots Henry a look, plonking a bowl of peas down in front of Crutchie for the boy to shell, a task which he takes up amiably, his bad leg propped up on a second chair. “Or you could go an’ buy your own dinner.”

“Fish pie, yum!” Henry clasps his hands together, bouncing up and down in his chair in mock excitement. For his troubles, a dishcloth sails right over the top of Edith’s head and hits him smack in the face.

Edith turns to Jack, gaping. She can’t believe he just did that – across the kitchen – she –

And then something wet hits the side of her face. One voice barks a laugh, another gasps. When she turns, there is the dishcloth on the floor beside her chair and Henry is wide-eyed, his hand over his mouth, a flush blooming across his pale cheeks.

“Miss, ‘m so sorry,” he stammers, “I didn’ mean to, I was aimin’ for Jack an’-“

“You might want to work on your throwing arm.” Edith cuts in, pursing her lips, leaning down to pick up the dishcloth and holding it out to Henry between her thumb and forefinger. “You would be absolutely terrible at cricket.”

The mortification quickly fades away, replaced by indignance as Henry snatches the dishcloth from between her fingers, his mouth opening and closing a few times, dumbfounded, before he manages to speak. This causes much amusement on the parts of Jack and Crutchie, the latter of which guffaws into the peas. “I’s fantastic at cricket, thank you very much.”

Crutchie snorts. “When has you ever played cricket?”

“‘S none o’ your concern.” Henry replies, sticking his chin in the air and throwing the dishcloth at Jack once again, this time clearing Edith’s head by a good distance. 

“Give it up, Henry, you ain’t posh enough to play cricket.” Jack says, catching the dishcloth in mid-air like it’s nothing at all and chucking the grey rag back into the sink.

Edith frowns. “Is cricket a posh sport?”

“You has to wear white to play it,” Crutchie grins, “you know how many hours it takes to scrub grass stains outta white laundry? Too many for most folks to afford from the washerwoman down the street.”

Jack, spotting the way that Edith’s cheeks colour a little, gives her a small smile amidst the laughter. “‘Fraid we’s more o’ a baseball crowd round here, Edie.”

She blinks, her mouth hardening into a thin line. Edith Pulitzer is not accustomed to being laughed at. Especially not by people not even presentable enough to be the help. “Father says baseball is vulgar entertainment for the masses.”

Daisy seems to sense even Jack’s temper wearing thin, because she peers at Edith over the top of Katherine’s typewriter, pausing in her efforts to peck out keys. “Why don’ you watch a game? There’s no sense judgin’ it ‘f you’s never tried.”

“Whaddaya reckon, Henry?” Jack asks, a grin spreading across his face. “Reckon we can rally the boys for a game tomorrow afternoon?”

“Can I promise them somethin’ better than fish pie after?”

“Best they’s gettin’ is sandwiches.”

“Done.”

“Go get the ingredients then.” Jack says, pulling his wallet out of his back pocket and fishing around for the appropriate change. Henry rolls his eyes, but gets up nonetheless. He still has an unfortunate tendency to push the boundaries, but he knows where he stands with Jack now.

He takes the money. “Bread, butter, ham?”

“Cheese.” Jack tells him. “Les’ll wanta come.”

Not long after Henry’s departure to the shop, Katherine returns, looking mildly flustered in the way that indicates a long day but not one that’s going to require a session of ranting about her editors. There’s ink smeared on her hands, as well as a little on her cheek, and her hair is held up with pencils rather than with hairpins, but it’s a day’s work done, an article in, and she’s home.

“Edith!” She cries. “How are you? How was the journey?”

“I’m quite well, thank you, and… I got here, at least.” Edith tilts her head to one side, her dark eyes skimming over Katherine’s slightly dishevelled form. “Jack tells me that congratulations are in order.”

“Oh!” Katherine bites her lip, just for a moment. She had meant to write. She had. It had just… slipped her mind. “Of course, I meant to tell you, but work has been so busy, I haven’t had a second to write.”

“Of course.” Edith nods, her face impassive.

Jack clears his throat. “Dinner.”

Plates get sent to the table, one going back into the oven for Henry, ready for when he gets back, but Jack stops Katherine before she can sit down and tuck in.

“Nuh-uh.” He laughs, taking hold of her wrists and tugging her over to the sink. “Whaddaya call this, Mrs. Kelly?” He holds up her hands, turning her palms towards her face so that she can see the ink smeared across them. “An’ you tells me off for not washin’ the paint off o’ my hands.”

Katherine laughs a little, but sets to with the soap and hot water at the sink before presenting her hands once again. “Do I pass inspection now?”

“Not quite.” Jack grins, grabbing the dishcloth and wiping away the little spot of ink that has found its way onto her cheek. “Now you’s done.”

He goes to steer them both towards the table, where Crutchie and Daisy have cheerfully informed Edith that if she waits for her sister and Jack to come to the table in order for her to start eating, as is the proper etiquette, then she’ll be waiting all night, telling her to just tuck in. However, before they get anywhere close, Katherine stops him with a hand on his arm.

“You’ve got something just here.” Katherine tells him, bringing her hand up to cup his face as if she’s about to wipe something away. Instead, however, she leans up and brushes a kiss across his lips, just barely there, just enough to reassure and reaffirm quite how much she loves him. When she pulls away, she can’t help but giggle at the smile which Jack is wearing. “There,” she smiles, adjusting his collar, “very handsome.”

Crutchie makes a retching noise into his plate. “You’s puttin’ me off o’ my food.”

“Oh, really?” Jack smirks, breaking away from his wife (with some difficulty, he might add) and wandering over to where Crutchie is inhaling his dinner. “I’ll just give this to Henry then.”

With that, he whips the plate out from under Crutchie’s knife and fork, holding it high in the air even as a playful tussle breaks out between the two of them.

Edith has honestly never seen anything like it, so disorganised and undignified, Jack and Crutchie landing gentle punches, Henry wandering back in halfway through with several loaves of bread and blocks of cheese. Henry’s appearance prompts Jack to explain the plan for the next afternoon to Katherine, which provides opportunity for Crutchie to steal his plate back. It’s utter, utter chaos. This trip, Edith decides, is going to be interesting, at least.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry that this chapter is a little on the boring side - you'll see why in a couple of chapters; I've got something big planned. As to the plan more generally, I think that this fic is going to conclude at the 70 chapter mark. That's the plan, anyway, though it is subject to change. Comments make me smile - they're all I'm living for in this ruddy quarantine.
> 
> Edith Louise Pulitzer married William Moore on December 21, 1911. He was four years her senior and by all accounts the marriage was a relatively happy one. I don't know whether it was arranged or not, but it was definitely an 'appropriate match', so I feel safe including this. They had five children together, two of whom died serving in WWII, and the youngest of which only passed away in 2010.


	55. Chapter 55

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know nothing about baseball, because we don’t play it in the UK. We have something similar, called rounders (which is obviously superior, Rule Britannia and all that) which I’ve based most of this on. If I’ve got something wrong, please tell me in the comments and I’ll fix it. Also, BABY KELLY! Ahem.

“Why are we making so many sandwiches?” Edith asks, wrinkling her nose.

She’s wearing her best dress for Sunday service, especially as her father might be there and she might get to speak to him again, for the first time in almost a year, and she really, really doesn’t want to get butter on it. Beside her, Katherine struggles to bite her tongue, layering cheese on the bread and passing it along the sideboard to Jack, who is attempting to pack the sandwiches into Katherine’s basket at the same time as tying his tie. It isn’t going particularly well.

“Because the newsies don’t eat very well at this time of year.” Katherine sighs. “This might be the only meal they get all day.”

“What?” Edith’s hand stutters in it’s work of buttering the bread – servant’s work, she might add. “All day? On a sandwich?”

Jack snorts, derisive and dark, to nobody but himself. “They’s lucky they gets this much.”

“How do they have the energy for baseball?” Edith frowns.

“Stuff like that keeps you warm. ‘Sides, it ain’t often they get to have fun.” Jack shrugs, packing the last of the sandwiches into the basket and then looking down at his tangled mess of a tie. “Uh, Ace? A little help?”

Katherine looks over at her husband, slightly helpless in the knot he’s worked himself into, and laughs as she steps up to him to fix it. They’ve been married for months now, and Katherine is starting to wonder if it will ever wear off, this feeling that she gets when she stands close to him, feels some part of him brush against some part of her, however briefly, even just her fingers at his throat, fixing his tie. Will she ever tire of this, such proximity to this wonderful husband of hers with his talented, artist’s fingers and his bright, kind eyes that glint with mischief? The father of the child that she is starting to feel inside of her? The child that is not kicking, not yet, not quite, but that has lent her stomach a soft swell beneath her clothes, a heaviness in her belly that was not there before.

She has chance to tell somebody new about such developments when she sees Rose, straying from Dr. Graceton’s side and wandering towards her, in the church courtyard after service. Edith scuffs at the ground with the toes of her boots, dejected at the absence of their father in the church’s pews, something which brings little but joy to Jack and Katherine. As Rose approaches, Jack nudges Edith, suggests they set off to the park. Edith nods, surprised he even remembered her presence. Dropping a kiss on Katherine’s cheek and telling her to catch them up, he leaves her to deal with Rose.

“I –“ Katherine steels herself, praying that Rose won’t try and have her over for another godawful tea at her news, “I have some news.”

“Oh? Pray tell.”

“I’m pregnant.”

“Oh, Katherine, how wonderful!” Rose squeals, though keeping her voice down, appropriate for church. Katherine wonders how she can communicate quite so much ear-piercing enthusiasm whilst still staying so quiet. She probably had that skill herself, once, taught by a governess to make her more amiable, more likely to make a good match. Her poor governesses. She was a lost cause from the start. “How far along?”

“Thirteen or fourteen weeks, I believe.” Katherine tells her, allowing herself a small smile.

 _It’s okay,_ she reminds herself, _to show that you’re excited._ Because she is, she is excited, and she refuses to allow the judgement of others to preclude that. She cannot wait to have this baby, to see Jack’s face when he gets to hold his child in his arms, to see him get everything he’s ever wanted. Her, a baby, a family.

“Oh, our little ones shall be but a few months apart! They shall surely be the best of friends.”

Katherine’s excitement shrivels up and dies. Still, her voice only dips a little when she asks: “Will Dr. Graceton permit it?”

“Oh.” Rose’s face drops, glancing over her shoulder to where her husband is engaged in a discussion about elocution with Mr. Fisher, who read the scripture today. “Well,” Rose turns back to Katherine, pursing her lips a little and setting her jaw, more determined that Katherine has ever seen her, “he has informed me that the children shall be purely my concern, that he does not wish to be bothered with them until they can properly converse. So, I imagine he shall have little say in the matter.”

Katherine frowns. “He is not excited?”

“He is. Just… for later. He has little interest in pregnancy or babies. Why, is your husband beside himself?” Rose laughs a little, as if the notion is laughable.

“Utterly.” Katherine says and, though it’s entirely true, she can’t say she’s completely immune to the jolt of satisfaction at the face Rose makes, her mouth turning into a little ‘o’. “I keep catching him talking to my stomach, as if conversing with the little one. He’s besotted already and he hasn’t even met the poor little thing.”

Rose smiles then, warm and open in a way that makes Katherine feel just a tad guilty for lording it over the other woman; Rose’s husband might be richer, posher, more educated, but Katherine’s husband loves her, and she loves him right back. “Well, he is quite besotted with you. It hardly surprises me.”

…

“Now, sandwiches _after_ baseball. I ain’t havin’ none o’ you pukin’.” Jack tells all the kids, when they arrive in the park, setting the basket down on a bench and promptly dividing them into teams. Edith sits and watches as the boys scatter across the big green field.

She sits and watches, on the outskirts, as she always does, while they play a round. It’s more entertaining than she thought it would be, considering the derisive tone her father had taken in regards to it. Edith gets so caught up in the moment that she doesn’t notice Katherine wandering into the park, or the way her sister stops on a bench a little way away and watches as Henry approaches her.

“My throwin’ arm ain’t so bad after all, huh?” Henry grins, shoving his hands in his pockets as he wanders over to her at the end of the first round.

“I’m not sure.” Edith frowns. “Lots of people are running about, but I’m not sure why.”

“Ain’t nobody ever explained baseball to you?” Henry frowns. Edith shakes her head. “Right,” Henry nods, casting about for a stick, then plonking himself down on the bench beside her and beginning to draw lines with it in the slightly muddy ground at their feet, “so, you’s got two teams, batters an’ fielders. The batters take it in turns to hit the ball as far as they can, an’ then they has to try an’ run round as many o’ these bases as they can ‘fore the ball gets brought back to one o’ these bases. ‘S the fielders who bring it back, they’s gotta try an’ catch the ball an’ get it back to a base while the batter is still between bases, to get them out. See?”

She does, sort of. “What happens if somebody is out?”

“Then they can’t bat no more.” Henry shrugs, then his face lights up. “You want a go at battin’?”

 _Yes. I’d love to. It looks like so much fun._ “I do not think that would be appropriate.”

“You scared or somethin’?”

Edith glares at him, then turns away, sticking her chin in the air. “I am _not_ scared.”

“So have a go.” Henry grins, grabbing her hand and pulling her towards the field. “‘S easy, I’ll teach you.”

Edith can’t believe he just touched her – grabbed her hand, no less. This grubby boy, practically a stranger, clearly with no idea of etiquette - “Fine.”

It’s almost worth joining in just for the look on Jack’s face when he sees her joining the line to bat. He’s on the opposite team, one of the fielders, as Henry had called them, but despite that fact his face breaks into a grin and he shoots her a double thumbs up across the park. Albert is up to bat, first, makes it round two of the bases before Jack throws the ball to another fielder to tap it in. Then it’s Crutchie’s turn.

Edith turns to Henry, who’s stood beside her in line to bat. “How is Crutchie –“

“Jus’ watch.” He hushes her, jerking his chin at Crutchie, whose weight is propped on his crutch, two shaky hands holding the bat.

Mush pitches slower, this time, not noticeably so, unless you were looking for it, but he does. Fast enough that it’s still not easy, but not the same way as he did for Albert. To his credit, Crutchie whacks the ball with no small amount of force, sending it sailing right over Jack’s head where he’s stood in the middle of the field. Dropping the bat, Crutchie hobbles (his speed rather impressive, Edith thinks, considering his injury) around the bases, heading for first as Jack breaks into an all-out sprint for the ball on the other side of the field. Edith frowns a moment, amidst the clamouring cheers of the other boys in line, who hoot and yell _go on, Crutchie_ , convinced that Jack will get the boy out before he’s even made second base. But the very second that Crutchie passes second base, the boys in the batting line yelling at him _to keep going, keep running, go on,_ Jack stops running back towards the bases, slowing to a walk, ball in hand, watching Crutchie’s back edging towards third. Edith sees him nod, just slightly, raising a lazy arm and tossing the ball back to Jojo, who runs to tap it on a base. She can’t help herself, jumping up and down and yelling for Crutchie to stop at third base, to stay safe there, not risk trying to make a home run.

Crutchie stops, breathing heavily, grinning, and they shout praise from the sidelines. And then it’s her turn. The first time, she misses, but that’s okay, lots of the boys miss. Jack, who is stood in her line of sight, far behind the pitcher, nods at her, smiling. She nods back, tries again, misses. Tears start to well in her eyes.

“Hey,” she hears Henry’s voice, behind her, “try lockin’ your wrists. Makes it easier.”

She swallows down the frustration. Who cares if she doesn’t hit this stupid ball? It’s not like she needs these boys to respect her anyway. She locks her wrists, swings, connects. Edith is so shocked that she doesn’t even start running until she hears the boys hooting and howling behind her, spurring her on to second base before screaming at her to hold it. She stops, chest heaving, thoroughly not dressed for this, thoroughly unladylike. And she knows that the boys probably went easy on her, secretly, the way they did for Crutchie, because she’s a girl and has no clue what she’s doing. It’s still the most fun she’s had in months.

Their team wins. Henry and Albert hoist Crutchie onto their shoulders and parade around the park, laughing and joking. Edith laughs with them.

Jack doesn’t quite manage to see out the game, though he plans to go and clap Crutchie and the others on the back later, because Carl tries to slide his way to third base and promptly bursts into tears from scraping up his leg pretty bad. Instead, he hoists Carl to his feet and takes him over to the bench, holding the kid’s hand the entire way and telling him them they’ll sort him out. Katherine spots them coming from where she’s sat on the bench and hops to her feet, ready to help sort Carl out.

“Oh, Carl,” she sighs, bending down in front of him once Jack sets him on the bench, “what happened?”

“Scraped my knee.” He sniffs.

“Y’did a good job o’ it too, didn’t you, kid?” Jack sighs. There’s always something. “C’mon, now, none o’ those tears, it ain’t nothin’ but a scrape. You’s had worse in scraps with the boys, ain’t you?”

Carl nods miserably, swiping at his damp eyes and snotty nose with the back of his hand. To be fair to him, the kid had scraped his leg up good and proper.

“Come on, Carl.” Katherine nudges him a little further onto the bench so that she can sit beside him and tucks him into her side. She doesn’t really know what to do with crying children, but she holds his snot-smeared hand and squeezes anyway, eternally glad she has Jack. He’s going to make a fantastic parent. She doesn’t know that he’s thinking the same thing about her as she tells Carl: “You hold my hand while Jack cleans that knee up, hm?”

Carl whimpers when Jack pours water from the bottle Katherine had stowed in the basket over his knee, but he doesn’t complain. Jack ruffles his hair for that, telling him that he’s doing real well. Then his eyes flick to Katherine.

“We got anything that’d do for a bandage? Don’ want it gettin’ infected.”

Katherine bites her lip, thinking, coming up empty. And then Edith appears behind Jack, tapping him on the shoulder where he’s crouched in front of Carl.

“Will this do?” She’s holding out a scarf, her scarf, in marbled silk, that Jack knows probably cost more than his entire outfit. “It’s not cotton, but it might keep it clean.”

Jack blinks up at her, a little dumbfounded, but then takes the material from between her fingers. “Thanks, Edie. ‘S real good o’ you.” He turns back to Carl, pushing the kid’s sock down so he can better wrap it around his knee, fingers tightening the fabric gently around the wound. “Whaddaya say to Miss Edith, Carl?”

“Thank you.”

“You are very welcome.” Edith replies, then wanders back over to the rest of the boys.

After they all sit around in the cold park, eating cheese sandwiches and smiling around them, after Jack sends them all off to sell the evening edition, after they set off walking back to the house, Edith decides that perhaps she does prefer baseball to cricket after all.

When they get back to the house, the three of them, Davey is sat on the front doorstep waiting for them.

“Dave, whaddaya think you’s doin’ out here?” Jack calls out to him, jogging ahead of the girls. “You’s got a key.”

Davey, shivering, pulls a face. “It seemed rude.”

 _Good grief._ Jack loves David like a brother, but there are some things about him that he will never understand. Who the hell decides to put politeness before warmth? Somebody who’s never had to worry about freezing to death, that’s who.

“You nitwit, c’mon, get in, get warm.” Jack mutters, working the door open and ushering Davey inside. “Well?” He finally asks, leaning against the kitchen cupboards once he’s got the coffee on to boil and has David in front of the stove to warm up. Davey frowns up at him, confused. “The date. We both knows that’s what you’s here to talk about.”

The confusion clears, replaced by uncertainty. “I don’t know how it went.”

“Whaddaya mean you don’ know?”

“It was goin’ really well, Jack, really well. She loved dinner, she made jokes, she laughed at my jokes –“

Jack snorts. “Bloody hell, she’s further gone for you than we thought.”

“Shut up.” Davey rolls his eyes. “ _Anyway_ , so I walk her back to her accommodation-“

“Nice, gentlemanly.” Jack comments, picking at his fingernails.

“- thanks - and she just stands there. Outside the door. Lookin’ at me. So, I say _goodnight,_ and I turn around to walk away. And then she says _are you seriously just walking away, David?_ And I couldn’t work out whether she was laughin’, or whether she was annoyed, so I just said _yes, do you need somethin’ else from me?_ And then she looked really upset and went inside.” Davey tells him, all in one breath.

Jack is seriously considering bashing David Jacobs’ head against a wall to knock some sense into him. How is it possible to be so clever and so dim at the same time? He pinches the bridge of his nose. “For Pete’s sake, she wanted you to kiss her!”

“What?” Davey cries in a tone akin to a cat that has just been dumped in a bucket of ice water.

“I told you’s to!” Jack throws his hands up in the air, put-upon and exasperated. “Why didn’t you?”

“Because I thought you were jokin’! That thing with the hot soup and the ice cream-“

 _Bloody hell._ “You’s such an idiot, Dave.” Jack sighs, taking the other man by the shoulders and walking him towards the front door. He opens it, pushes a very confused Davey outside and tells him: “Walk over there, knock on the door, tell her that you like her an’ you wanta kiss her.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Go. Do it. Come back for dinner once ‘s done.”

With that, Jack shuts the door in Davey’s face, telling himself that sometimes people need tough love. And sometimes, people really need a reality check. When Davey returns, an hour later with cheeks red from cold, Jack just raises one eyebrow when he walks into the kitchen.

“Miriam agrees that I’m an idiot.”

“An’?”

A small, embarrassed smile, cheeks reddening from something other than cold. “She let me kiss her. I asked first, like you said.”

Jack congratulates him, then proceeds to make jokes about it all through dinner.

…

Edith, Jack comes to discover over the next couple of days, is a late riser. He supposes that it’s a natural consequence of her upbringing, that she has never had to wake up for work. Katherine is getting better, though her sleep schedule, despite his best efforts, is still far from ideal. His own isn’t great, so it’s difficult to find room to bargain with Kath. Edith, however, is another level entirely.

On the 24th, both Jack and Katherine finally have their days off – three whole days, in fact, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day – but there’s too much to be done for them to lie in bed all day, so they’ve already completed a lot of the preparations before Edith emerges from her room. They don’t hear her coming down the stairs, so they’re rather… caught up in things, in the living room at that point.

See, Jack _knows_ that Race could probably handle doing the Santa thing this year, given that he’s aging out of the lodgehouse come spring, but it doesn’t feel quite right to place such a burden on the kid. Jack remembers how hard it used to be to scrape together enough to buy each boy even a sweet or two back when he was just selling papes, and he sold a damn sight more papes than Race does. So, he has a pile of toys and clothing and wrapping paper in the living room and he and Katherine have been systematically working their way through each one, wrapping it and tying on a label and setting it aside ready for the stealth operation Jack is dreading pulling off that evening.

Except then Katherine says something cheeky, and she’s so damn clever, and she’s so damn pretty, so Jack gets ahold of her and starts tickling, because he’s learned, over these few months of marriage, that he can turn her into a giggling, squirming mess by just stroking his fingers over the backs of her knees. He uses this knowledge to full advantage, laughing as she swats at his head, as he pins her to the floor and kisses her to keep her quiet, as she laughs into his mouth. And then stops, with a little _oh,_ stops moving entirely, and Jack pulls back. He’s been too rough with her, he’s always too rough –

Katherine smiles at him, twists her hand to take his where it’s still pinning her wrist to the floor in amongst their tussling and slides it down between them to rest against her stomach. There’s a definite bump there, now. Jack, still half on top of her, too scared to move in case he’s hurt her in their playfighting, frowns as she places his hand there.

“I think our baby just kicked.”

She smiles, whispering. It had been a strange feeling. She’s not sure if it was a kick, honestly, but what else could it be? It was a twinge, not entirely comfortable, but a definite movement. She has a little person inside of her, with tiny feet, tiny toes, that they made.

“I thought – I thought your book said sixteen weeks –“

“Fourteen weeks – fifteen, now, I suppose, was only an estimation.” Katherine shrugs, the most content she’s felt since the day she married Jack. “Besides, we should have known ours would be an early bloomer. A Christmas miracle, perhaps.”

Jack looks down at her with a shaky smile. “Our baby just kicked.”

“Yes. They did.”

“And that’s a good thing, ain’t it? Means everythin’s okay?”

“Yes.” She squeezes his hand, where it’s resting on her stomach. “They’re letting you know that they’re okay.”

There’s a moment, then, a moment when Jack looks at Katherine like a man whose prayers have been answered, a moment like finding salvation, like redemption dawning across his face. And then a grin breaks out across his face instead. He rolls them over – gently, so very gently, and pulls her down to kiss him.

“We’s got a baby, Kath. A baby.”

They’re laughing, then, and kissing, and crumpling the wrapping paper. When Edith comes downstairs, she stops in the doorway, just for a moment, watches them, wrapped up in one another, and her chest aches. She creeps back up the stairs, letting them be a family for a little longer.


	56. Chapter 56

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's not going to be a chapter up tomorrow because this thesis proposal is kicking my ass. Hence, have two today, because I'm nice like that. I'll try to reply to comments tonight, but don't be offended if I don't get around to it right then - I appreciate each and every one that you lot leave <3
> 
> The last part of this chapter (and what follows on from it) are the reason for the M rating, friends. No smut, just angst, but, well… you’ll see. There’s descriptions of blood. And trauma (as in the medical definition, not mental anguish… though that too). So, be careful. I’ll see you on the other side. 
> 
> Historical note: The word crush, in the sense of romantic infatuation, is first recorded as being used in 1884.

When Katherine had told her that their house was going to be invaded by thirty newsies on Christmas Day, Edith had thought she was joking. As it turns out, she was sorely mistaken.

Christmas morning itself is fairly peaceful, to be fair. They lie in a little, as Jack only got back at a ridiculous time of night the night before from playing Santa, and then they sit in the kitchen and eat bacon sandwiches, Jack cracking jokes about how the bump now clearly visible under Katherine’s nightgown is absolutely nothing to do with him and everything to do with her sneaking too many mince pies out of the tin. Katherine flicks a tea towel at Jack’s head as he walks past and threatens to tell Mrs. Ross that he doesn’t like the mince pies her daughter gave them. (That would be a categorical lie. Her mother might leave a sour taste in their mouths, but Mrs. Chavers’ cooking is divine.)

Considering the amount of presents that had been in the living room before Jack’s adventures as Santa the night before, the offerings under the tree look a little pitiful. But they have a tree, even though it’s sparsely decorated, and there are presents under it, and Jack can’t quite believe that this is his life. That he has a house, with sprigs of holly on top of the curtain rails and a tree decorated with cheap tinsel and coloured paper hearts that Katherine folded. That he has a wife and a baby on the way. That there are actual Christmas presents under the tree.

For Katherine, of course, it’s rather different. Compared to the lounge in their old house – strange to think that it was still standing this time last year – their living room looks shabby and cheap. With there being seven of them – six, the past few years, without Lucy – and little restriction on budget, the presents usually ended up spilling out from under the tree, making the ceremony of opening them an hours-long affair. This year, they’re tighter on money, living on their own with the baby on the way, so they’ve agreed on nothing extravagant. There are only eight gifts under the tree, but Katherine knows that that’s more than anything Jack grew up with, so she prays that Edith doesn’t say anything as she sits down.

Jack goes first, Katherine giving him some shirts and socks because he’s in desperate need of new ones but is still refusing to step inside a tailor’s. And then she hands him a second gift, this one a set of watercolours that she’s seen him staring at through the window of the art store for months. His face lights up like nothing on this earth, and Katherine’s heart almost breaks at how something so small as receiving a gift is world-shattering for him. And then Edith hands him a gift, followed by one to Katherine. Both of them look at her, stunned.

“I called into the bookstore while you were both at work yesterday.” She shrugs. “They refuse to let us walk into the village at school, so it has been rather nice to have the freedom to shop again.”

“Thank you, Edith.” Katherine says, and she means it. They never did presents to one another at home – presents were just something that appeared under the tree, courtesy of their parents. She can’t believe that Edith did this. “I – um, here.” Katherine snatches up two gifts from beneath the tree, thrusting them at Edith. “From Jack and I.”

Katherine’s present reveals a copy of a book called _The Yellow Wall-Paper._ It would sound dreadfully boring, had the suffrage magazine not run a review of it not two weeks before, hailing it as a ‘masterful evocation of the plight of women’s psychiatric care’. She might feel as though she doesn’t know her sister, she realises, but her sister certainly knows her. And her husband too, apparently, because Jack is flicking through a book about drawing anatomy, with examples on every page. Edith, for her part, receives a letter writing set from Katherine. Katherine hopes that it’s plain in the gift, the words she can’t say, the relationship she wants to cultivate. Jack has painted her a jewellery box with scenes of New York rendered in perfect miniature. It’s the smallest number of Christmas presents Edith’s ever had, Katherine knows, hell, the two gifts that Jack sets in her lap next are for her as well, but, somehow, she doesn’t feel discontent. She hopes that Edith doesn’t either.

Jack’s gifts to her are an omnibus edition of H.G. Wells’ fiction, with a message scrawled in his messy, childish handwriting on the front flyleaf asking her to read them to him over the coming months. She resists the urge to make a joke about how it’s a gift to himself as well. He’d only feel bad about it, and she knows that she enjoys sitting in the armchair and reading to him like nothing else on earth. And then the other gift, well…

He’d promised her a replacement for the painting he’d given her last Christmas, but this goes above and beyond that. It’s a sketch of a woman - the face only half-visible because of her position, but unmistakably Katherine – bent over a typewriter, deep in concentration. It’s beautiful, of course, all of Jack’s work is, but the texture of the piece strikes her as odd until she realises that the paper that the sketch is drawn on is a collage of every article that she’s written in the past three months, maybe more, each one neatly clipped out of the paper. And if she sheds a couple of tears, well, she can blame it on the pregnancy hormones.

The rest of the morning passes comfortably; Jack working on his latest commission, Edith reading, Katherine knitting, each one of them sprawled in the living room in companionable silence. Katherine alternates between stitching a row for the baby booties that she’s trying to make, staring at her knitting pattern as if it’s personally offended her, and throwing down her needles to go into the kitchen to stare pensively at the turkey in the oven. She is determined not to burn it.

It’s just after eleven am that their peace gets shattered, almost thirty newsies cramming themselves into the tiny living room, the little ones excitedly waving around the toys that Santa brought. Edith isn’t unused to sharing space with others, she has six siblings, after all, but this is an entirely different form of chaos. Ten minutes in, and Edith’s skin has started to feel itchy, the room too warm, her ears too full of noise. She retreats out into the hallway and sits on the stairs, trying to clear her head before they all have to go and eat Christmas lunch.

As her breathing slows, she lets her eyes trace over the back of the front door, scratched and a little warped despite Jack and Katherine’s clear efforts to make it more presentable with a fresh coat of paint.

“Hey, you alright?” Her eyes shoot up to find Henry in the hallway.

“Quite alright.” She clears her throat. “I was just a little warm in there.”

Henry smiles a little, coming to perch on the step below her. “The boys can be a lot, huh?” Edith nods, smiling back, something that earns a laugh from the boy. “Tell me ‘bout it, I’s gotta live wi’ them.”

She blinks. “Are you an orphan, like Jack?”

“Nah, my mother’s round an’ ‘bout.” Henry shrugs. “Ain’t no kids allowed at the brothel she works at though, not ‘less you wants trouble.”

Edith frowns. “What does she do there?”

Henry’s expression turns a little irritated – not quite angry, but something closed off and confused. “…she works in a brothel. Ain’t you hearin’ me right? I know it ain’t no fancy career, but ‘s honest work. She don’ rob nobody.”

“I am unfamiliar with the term brothel.”

“Oh.” Henry’s eyes widen and he looks away. Edith wonders whether she’s done something wrong. “Uh. Maybe you should ask your sister. I ain’t sure ‘s appropriate for me to tell you.” He coughs. “So, Mista Pulitzer chuck you out too, huh? That why you’s livin’ wi’ Kath?”

“My father did not throw me out!” She snaps, shifting backwards on the step.

“Hey, hey, okay.” Henry raises his hands in surrender. “Didn’t mean to tread on no toes.”

Edith softens, just a little, sticks her nose in the air. “Our house burned down last January and the new one isn’t built yet. Katherine invited me to stay here instead of at school, that is all.”

“You stays overnight at school?” Henry asks, wrinkling his nose. Edith is somehow immensely glad that that’s the part of her explanation that he chooses to focus on. She doesn’t feel like reliving the fire again.

For Henry’s part, he’s heard things about school from Les, and none of it sounds fun. Reading and writing and arithmetic, with a ruler whacked across your hand for every wrong answer? And having to stay there overnight? It sounds awful.

“Yes. It’s a boarding school.”

“Ain’t that kinda boring?”

Edith looks at him, opening her mouth to mock him, but stops herself. He… sort of has a point. She finds herself laughing. “It _is_ dreadfully dull.”

Henry laughs with her, and she decides that he looks rather nicer when he laughs, despite his crooked teeth and uncombed hair. He’s still smiling when he leans up, hand raised to brush something off her cheek. “You’s, uh, got somethin’-“

She freezes. Good grief, she hopes that she hasn’t been wandering around with bacon grease on her cheek or something – she’d be mortified. But before his fingers can so much as brush against her face, Katherine comes out of the kitchen and stops in the hall, raising her eyebrows.

“Is everything okay?”

“Yeah,” Henry snatches his hand away, jumping to his feet and shoving both of his hands in his pockets, “uh, jus’ makin’ sure Miss Edith ain’t upset or nothin’.”

“Ah.” Katherine raises a single, unconvinced eyebrow. “Edith, would you give me a hand in the kitchen, please?”

Edith may be a smart girl, but Katherine knows that whole thing went right over her head. Honestly, she isn’t surprised. It had taken her several months of working in the newspaper office, surrounded by men, before she wised up to their ways. It’s the downside, she supposes, of spending a lifetime hidden away. When you’re finally released, you have no idea how to handle anything.

As the two of them extract the not-burned turkey out of the oven, which Katherine honestly feels she deserves a medal for, Edith looks at her and asks: “Katherine?”

“Hm?”

“What’s a brothel?”

Katherine almost drops the skewer she’s using to check the turkey. “Why would you want to know a thing like that?”

Edith frowns. “Henry said his mother worked in one.”

 _Did he, now?_ Well, she’s got to learn sometime, and it might as well be now, so that she doesn’t humiliate herself in future. “It’s a place where prostitutes work.”

“Oh.” Edith looks down, a little pale.

Katherine keeps her eyes determinedly on the turkey, pressing the skewer into the tender meat. “Was Henry… was he bothering you, Edith?”

“No.” Edith shakes her head. “He has been very nice, actually.”

Katherine shoots her a tentative look. “Are you –“

“No.” Edith shakes her head. “I’m not like you, Katherine. I want comfort, not freedom.”

Katherine nods. The turkey is done, juices running clear. She hasn’t managed to undercook it either. Frankly, she deserves a trophy. It puts her in a good enough mood that she turns to her sister before she slopes back off to join the boys and smiles at her.

“Thank you. For being so welcoming to the boys this week. It means a lot to Jack. And me, as well.”

Edith looks at her, long and lingering, the same dark, assessing eyes as their father. And then she nods. A truce, of sorts. An agreement.

Katherine doesn’t bring it up again until after all the boys have gone home and her and Jack are lying in bed that night. He’s almost dozed off, at this point, predictably; he rarely sleeps better than when they’re like this, Katherine wrapped around him, his fingers tracing those slow circles on her side that make her shiver.

“Jack, my love?” She hums against his shoulder, planting a kiss there just to taste him, the salt and earth of him, warm and grounding.

“Hm?”

“Do you think you could have a chat with Henry?”

“What ‘bout?” Jack cracks one eye open.

“Edith.” Katherine says, sending him a significant look. “Let him down gently?”

Jack doesn’t pretend not to know what she’s talking about. He knows his boys well enough to realise that Henry has a raging crush on Katherine’s little sister. But all his boys have gone through that phase – hell, Romeo has never grown out of it – when they get their heads turned for the first time by a pretty girl and start making all sorts of stupid decisions until they get their heart broken.

“Kath, ‘s fine. I has a talk wi’ all o’ the boys ‘bout not gettin’ nobody pregnant once they hit thirteen. He ain’t goin’ to do nothin’.”

“I’m not worried about Edith getting pregnant, Jack, I’m worried about him getting his heart broken.” Katherine pokes his side. _Honestly,_ she thinks, _he’s such a boy sometimes._ “Look, anything that happens… it’ll never work out.”

“They’s jus’ kids, Kath, it ain’t that serious-“ Jack says, shifting slightly, stretching, hauling the both of them up a little further to sit back against the pillows. He knows her too well to think that she’s going to drop this.

“I don’t want her ruining her reputation over him.”

Because even though Edith had said no, her actions didn’t. Jack’s expression darkens at Katherine’s words; the circles he’s tracing on her hip slow, then stop altogether. He turns his face away from her, that tendon in his neck standing out.

“Like I ruined yours, huh?”

He laughs, after he says it, a little breathy thing with no humour in it. _I know you ain’t seein’ that right now, but one day you will. In a year, or five, or twenty. An’ I don’t wants to still be around when you realises I ruined your life._

“You know that’s not what I meant.”

Jack sighs, because he does, he does know that’s not what she meant. He stares up at the ceiling. “‘S the truth, though, ain’t it?”

“No, it is not.” Katherine frowns, putting her hand on his face, that face that she loves so well, could trace from memory, and turning him to face her. “Edith is fourteen, Jack. She doesn’t have options like I did, she doesn’t have a career to fall back on. Don’t think Father won’t have her sent to some sort of convent if she doesn’t toe the line, because he will. I don’t want her getting into something she can’t handle.”

She’s right, he knows. It just seems like hypocrisy, somehow. “I’ll talk to Henry.”

And although that’s forgiveness, from Jack, Katherine tells him this next bit, just because it’s true. “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“Yeah,” Jack sighs, and means it, though it’s hard to believe her even as he kisses her forehead and then each one of her closed eyes, “you too.”

…

Boxing Day is, apparently, according to Katherine, the day that you go and pay calls. Jack has absolutely no idea where she got this idea from, but it involves her being out for the day and taking different things to different people. So Jack does as he’s been told to do, for once in his life, and heads over to Henry’s usual selling spot, calling out as he approaches.

“You done for the day?”

Henry looks over, a little surprised, but nods. “Yeah.”

“C’mon,” Jack slings an arm around his shoulders, “you want a sandwich?”

Henry snorts. _Stupid question._ “Always.”

He doesn’t ask what is going on until Jack has sat down next to him on the park bench and handed him his sandwich. He isn’t stupid. Get the food first, at least. When he first asks, Jack plays dumb, until: “You’s a shit liar.”

Jack sighs. “Kath wants me to talk to you ‘bout Edith.”

“What ‘bout her?”

“Your crush on her.”

Henry glares at Jack. “I ain’t got a crush on her!”

“You’s a shit liar.” He mimics. Henry takes a violent bite of his sandwich, feeling Jack’s eyes on the side of his face. His voice is softer when he asks: “She feel the same?”

“I dunno, I ain’t asked.”

“Then don’ get into it.”

Another glare. “I don’ take orders from you, Jack.”

“I ain’t orderin’, I’s advisin’.” Jack tells him, firm. “Don’ do it, Henry. ‘S goin’ to cause a lotta pain an’ you won’t get nothin’ outta it.”

And the thing is, Henry already knew. It doesn’t mean he has to like it. “You an’ Kath worked out.” He grumbles.

“We did.” Jack nods slowly. “But we was livin’ in the same city, an’ Kath could support hersel’ when her family disowned her, an’ I had a steady job. You ain’t got none o’ that.”

“I really like her, Jack.”

“I know, kid.” And he does, and it’s fucking awful. Because somewhere else, in a different life, Jack wouldn’t have to have this conversation. In a world where every kid got to go to school and associate with whoever they liked, there would be a lot worse pairings than Edith and Henry. But they don’t live in that world. In fact, Jack and Katherine’s success is so ridiculously unlikely – a combination of dumb luck and a lot of big sacrifices – that he can hardly believe that this is him, his life. Jack claps Henry on the shoulder. “An’ that’s why you’s gotta do the right thing.”

…

Across town, Katherine has a baby in her arms. See, Daisy is spending Christmas with her sister, her sister’s husband, and their child. Paul, the child in question, is an infant of frankly frightening proportions, ten pounds at birth and only getting larger. He has the same big blue eyes and blond curls as his mother, the same rounded, ruddy cheeks. Katherine thinks that she might be in love.

She has never been what anybody could call maternal. Children are difficult. They don’t make sense and she’s never had a way with them. That’s Jack, always has been. Her husband can charm adults like it’s nothing, but children? They worship him. Holding Paul, therefore, should feel strange. Unnatural. Uncomfortable. But it’s actually kind of pleasant, holding him in her arms, cradling him, feeling the soft warmth of a little person against her chest. A little person who needs her, who feels safe enough to fall asleep in her arms, to let her rock him. He has two of his fingers in his mouth, in between rosy, plump lips that sit under the daintiest little button nose.

Her and Jack’s baby won’t look quite like this, she knows, they’ll have curly dark hair and brown eyes. She hopes their baby won’t be quite as big. But theirs will be just as perfect.

“You’s broody, you is.” Daisy remarks, full-on smirking at Katherine from her position across the kitchen, rifling through the little gift basket that Katherine had brought for them, insisting that as she brought shortbread, she ought at least to try a little bit. Katherine looks down at the baby in her arms.

“I can’t wait for mine.”

She reiterates this sentiment later, when she’s curled up in their bed with a mug of tea and her new edition of H.G. Wells.

“How was everythin’ wi’ Daisy?” Jack asks, fiddling with his suspenders as he gets changed into his pyjamas.

“I got to hold her nephew.” She tells him, sipping at her tea. It’s good. She’s not much of a tea drinker, but Jack knows exactly the way that she likes it, a little bit of honey stirred in to satisfy her sweet tooth. “I really liked it.”

“Yeah?” He smiles at her over his shoulder.

She smiles back. “I can’t wait for our little one to come along.”

“Me neither, Ace.” Jack says, climbing into bed beside her. “Me neither.”

Only four hours later, he remembers that you’ve always got to be careful what you wish for.

“Jack? Jack, wake up!”

There’s a hand on him, on his shoulder, shaking him. He flinches, then recognises the voice as Katherine’s, the touch as Katherine’s, and relaxes. “Hm? ‘S up?”

“I’m bleeding.”

Jack blinks up at his wife, his eyes clouded by sleep. He resists the urge to groan, deep in his throat, at being roused at – he rolls over, blinks at the clock by their bed – three am, knowing that she’s in a far worse state than he is at this point. “Must be that time o’ the month, sweetheart.” He yawns, swinging his legs out of bed and rubbing at his bleary eyes. “Go sort yoursel’ out, I’ll change the sheets.”

“Jack,” she says, behind him, and it’s then when he hears the fear in her voice, “you don’t get monthly bleeds when you’re pregnant.”

He turns around, eyes wide, pulls the cover back. Bile rises in his throat. Blood. Blood fucking everywhere, like it had been at the Refuge, staining the floor, sticky and wet and spreading across the sheets. It’s so red. Not like dried blood, but fresh, bright red and garish, like his paints. If only it was paint. Katherine’s nightgown is soaked in it, too.

“It hurts.” She tells him, tears in her eyes, hand on her belly.

What is he supposed to do? He’s a useless husband, a useless father, he doesn’t know what to do in these situations. _Blood. Katherine. Blood._ Jack snatches up his jacket from beside the bed, squeezing her hand with the other.

“I’s gonna send Edith for a doctor, okay? I’s gonna be right back.”

He almost trips over himself staggering down the stairs, bursting into Edith’s room. “Edith, Edith, doll, I needs you to get up.”

“Whatisit?” The girl, mussed with sleep, blinks at him, wincing as the light he flips on burns her retinas.

“‘S Katherine, she ain’t well;” Jack tells her, frantic, pulling her into a sitting position and wrapping his jacket around her shoulders, “d’you know where Dr. Graceton lives?” Edith nods, immediately wide-eyed. “I needs you to run there an’ get him, fast as you can, okay? I don’t care ‘f you has to break a window to get him up, we need him, okay?”

“Okay.”

For once in her life, Edith Pulitzer doesn’t question Jack. She just stuffs her feet into her boots and runs out of the door, pulling Jack’s jacket closer around her, grateful for the layer over her nightgown in the winter chill. She’s run through the streets of New York in her nightgown before, almost a year before, and yet this is somehow more terrifying. There’s a different kind of fire on her heels now.

Jack, back in their bedroom, sits beside his wife. He has no idea what to do. “D’you want me to-“

“No, no, we’ll wait for the doctor.”

“What – tell me what to do, Kath, please.”

“Pray with me?”

 _No,_ Jack wants to scream at her, _no, I won’t fucking pray with you._ Everything, he’s had everything, and now her stupid God is trying to wash it away again in a sea of blood. But he doesn’t. Instead, he nods, terse and jerky, and pulls her against him, holding her clasped hands in one of his, his arm around her, and watches her mouth move in silent prayer, her eyes firmly closed, her hands clutching his so tightly that her skin turns white. They sit in silence on the life raft of their mattress and Jack tilts his head towards the sky, towards the stars painted on their ceiling that suddenly seem incredibly far away. He prays. One line, over and over again.

_Don’t take her away from me. Please, don’t take her away from me._


	57. Chapter 57

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings for death, grief, miscarriage, blood, medical descriptions.

There’s something about waiting that’s rather like dying.

Waiting, you see, is the kind of pain that burns slowly, stripping away skin and nerve endings, magnesium on sandpaper, white hot and spreading. Jack can feel matches striking inside of his throat. He tries to swallow them down, tilting his head back to look at the ceiling. This ceiling was the first one he plastered when they renovated the house. He hadn’t quite mastered it at that point. There are scars in the ceiling like the ones on his back where the spindles of the banister railing at the top of the stairs are digging into him. Dr. Graceton told him to leave him alone to work, that he will fetch him when he’s needed. Katherine hadn’t begged him to stay, not verbally at least, though her eyes told a different story. So he waits at the bottom of the stairs that lead to their room, as close as possible, and it feels like dying. It feels like dying rather more when he remembers that Katherine might actually be.

If she does, it’ll be his fault. He knows this. It’ll be his fault just the same as it was his fault when his mother died. The same way, too. He doesn’t want to see Katherine turn grey. He can’t imagine her as anything other than bursting with colour. Jack stares up at the ceiling and wonders what kind of sick and twisted god would take her away from him. Wonders why his prayer wasn’t answered, despite Katherine’s conviction. Wonders if that kick that Katherine thought she felt was sent to torture them both. If this is what her god does, he wants no part of it.

He’s told Edith to wait downstairs. He’s under no illusions about the likelihood of good news here. When the doctor comes down the stairs, though, grim and grey-faced, it’s still somehow a shock. Jack jolts to his feet.

“Your wife is sleeping.” Jack almost collapses to the floor. _Alive. Katherine’s alive._ “She had significant blood loss, but she will make a full recovery.” _Full recovery. Full fucking recovery._ “However –“ _shit shit fuck he can’t do a however,_ “- I’m afraid your wife has miscarried a baby girl.”

It takes those words for Jack to realise that there’s a bundle of bloodied towels in the doctor’s arms. _No. No no no no no no. It can’t – he can’t –_

“I’ll have the body taken to this funeral home.” Dr. Graceton tells him, handing him a business card. _William Houghton, Undertaker_. Jack drops it, stoops to pick it up with shaking fingers. The doctor gives him a look, a look of what he isn’t quite sure of, and makes to move past him.

“Wait.” Jack calls out in a voice that sounds as if it hasn’t been used in ten years, turning around. “Can – can I hold her?”

The look on the doctor’s face is distinctly one of disgust, then, but he comes forward anyway and transfers the bundle into Jacks trembling arms. It’s warm, still, the bundle of towels, it’s still fucking warm. It takes Jack two tries to pull back the edge of the towel, fingers shaking as they are.

She’s smaller than he expected. He could fit her in the palm of his hand. Those baby booties Katherine is knitting? He could wrap her in one like a blanket. He gets stuck, on that, a little, stuck in the knowledge that she’ll never wear them. A little girl. His little girl. Lucy. And the worst of it is that she doesn’t look like she’s gone. She doesn’t look like any dead body Jack’s ever seen, not grey and chipped away at like other corpses. She looks warm. She’s pink, like fresh scrubbed skin. She has tiny little fingers with tiny little fingernails. She’s perfect. She’s perfect and theirs and gone.

Jack doesn’t know how long he stands there, staring down Lucy, but when the doctor takes her back and covers her back up with the towel, he doesn’t resist. He doesn’t think he has the strength to. The doctor makes to leave again. Jack stops him.

“Katherine – she’ll be okay?”

Dr. Graceton turns around. “Your wife should make a full recovery, as I said. I’ve put her under mild sedation, but she should wake in about half an hour.”

Jack nods. Swallows. “Could… could this happen again?” He can’t do this again. Katherine can’t do this again. They’ll never survive it.

“Mr. Kelly, I can tell you right now that your wife will never get pregnant again. There is absolutely no danger of that.”

He chokes. “What?”

The doctor looks at him as if he’s some mentally incapacitated child. He speaks slowly, really slowly, patronising. Jack can’t bring himself to care, feels as though he needs these pauses in between words, needs the time. Why couldn’t they have had more time? “The scar tissue created by a trauma like this won’t allow for a pregnancy. Once she’s healed you can go on with your…” he wrinkles his nose, looking at Jack like he’s some sort of monster, “… _activities_ without concern for that.”

“I don’ care about fuckin’ her,” Jack is shouting now though he doesn’t know quite how, his voice breaking, “I care that she wanted kids in the future, an’ now she can’t have ‘em!”

The doctor takes a step back, lowers his tone. “Mr. Kelly, there was an underlying condition that caused this. Your wife would never have been able to have children. I really am sorry for your situation, but at some point she would have lost a baby and this would have occurred, preventing any future pregnancy. You should be glad she’s even alive.”

“What, an’ that’s what I’s s’posed to tell her?” Jack snarls, biting back tears. “To jus’ be glad she’s alive?”

“Yes.” The doctor tightens his jaw. “I’ll be back to check on her tomorrow morning.”

He walks down the stairs. Jack stumbles back, running from something, some shadow, until his back hits the wall, knocking the wind out of him. He can’t breathe. He can’t even stand up. He slides to the floor and screams into his hands, too far gone to remember any words that aren’t prayers or curses, and really aren’t they both the same thing?

“Jack?”

He doesn’t know when Edith climbed the stairs, or when she found herself in front of him, or what she’s even seen. All he knows is that she’s looking down at him, still dressed in her nightgown and his jacket, and she looks more scared than he’s ever seen her.

“I don’t understand. Is Katherine – is she going to die?”

Edith’s lip trembles. Jack’s hand does too, when he reaches out and pulls her down beside him. She comes, pliant as the day he did the same in the Hotel Netherland, even though she’s taller now. She tucks herself into his side just the same.

“No, no, the doctor says she’s goin’ to be jus’ fine.”

“Then why are you crying?”

Jack brings his free hand up to his face, swipes at his eyes. His fist comes away damp. He hadn’t even realised. He hadn’t even realised.

“She lost the baby.”

The words don’t belong to him. They can’t belong to him. They belong to somebody else, somebody who is supposed to be the strong one, the leader, Captain Jack. Santa Fe has never felt further away.

“Oh.”

“An’ she ain’t ever goin’ to be able to have another.”

“Oh.”

“An’ now I’s got to tell her.”

“Can- can I do anything?”

“Nah, Edie, you’s fine. You did a real good job, there, though.”

Jack doesn’t know where he finds the strength from, but he hauls them both to their feet and tells Edith to go to bed. Edith looks like she wants to say no, to force her way up the stairs to see her sister, but she doesn’t. Maybe she can see it behind Jack’s eyes, that he doesn’t have the energy to fight her, that he’s numb now, and distant, and doesn’t know how to do any of this. She squeezes his arm, tight enough to hurt, and then goes back into her bedroom.

It takes every ounce of Jack to walk back into that bedroom, every ounce of self-control, of willpower, of energy. When he enters, Katherine is still asleep, mercifully. Jack’s never been more grateful to see the rise and fall of her chest, but he wonders if it would be better if she just stayed asleep. Because she will wake, the doctor said she would, and with wakefulness will come the pain.

The bed is still stained red, a reminder of all that’s happened. He should change the sheets, but he doesn’t know how to do it with a person on the bed, especially a person who’s just lost too much blood, and they’re probably going to need a new mattress anyway. When he lies down beside her, though, it’s still wet, still sticky. Jack knows that he could scrub himself raw three times a day for a year and he’d still see this blood on his skin.

He lies there and he watches. This was his job, wasn’t it? Watcher, protector. And he’d failed. Had there been signs? Something he could have done? Something he could have seen earlier? He doesn’t suppose it matters now.

“Jack?” Katherine blinks awake, stirring, then groaning in pain. Her eyes are glassy and unfocused, though he doesn’t know whether it’s the blood loss or the sedation.

“Hey, Ace.” He whispers, trying not to start crying again. One of them needs to be strong here. One of them has to be, or everything will crumble. He reaches out and tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “How’re you feelin’?”

“Awful.” She whimpers, catching hold of his hand and keeping it there, pressed to her cheek, searching for some sort of comfort. “What did the doctor say? Is the baby okay?”

“What kinda awful? Sick? In pain?”

“Pain. Cramping, like time of the month.” She sighs, winces, shifts. Fists her hands in his undershirt, pulls him a little closer to her. Jack tries his best to comply, shifting closer, trying not to jostle her on the mattress. Katherine doesn’t seem to care, tucking herself in closer to him. Jack doesn’t want this, doesn’t want to be touched, any brush of fingertips might set him off, but Katherine needs this, needs this closeness, and he needs to do this for her. “What did the doctor say, Jack?”

Jack fixes his eyes on the far wall, swallows. “He’s comin’ back to check on you in the mornin’, but he says you should make a full recovery.”

“And the baby?” He needs to tell her. He needs to. But the words are stuck in his throat. He can’t get them out. He’s choking on them. “Jack. The baby?” He remembers how Snyder had held his head under the water in the boathouse once, the way that he’d thrashed and screamed in silent streams of bubbles. The way, when the water flowed into his mouth, that he’d gone very still and quiet. The way that blackness started to creep in around the edges of his vision. “Oh my god.”

Jack thinks that it might be the first time he’s ever heard her take the lord’s name in vain. He pulls her in tight to him, hears her sharp intake of breath at the hurt it causes, but feels the way that she grips him tighter for it.

“Was it my fault?” She sounds numb, her voice barely even there, as if it has been stolen away.

“No, sweetheart, no, no, no,” he plants kisses in her hair, her head tucked against his chest, prays that she won’t look up and see him crying, “it ain’t you, never you.”

Katherine had a felt elephant, when she was little, one that matched with Lucy’s, a gift from Uncle Worthington one Christmas when stuffed toys first came out and were all the rage. She had loved that elephant. It had taken quite a pounding, glued to her hands through childhood illnesses and tantrums. One day, when she was six, she picked it up and the seam ripped open, completely out of nowhere, stuffing spilling out everywhere. She screamed and screamed and screamed, until the whole household came running. The housekeeper had tutted and taken her elephant away to mend him, sending him back with a bandage and a cake for being a good patient that Katherine had to help him eat, seeing as his tummy had been upset by the operation and all.

Katherine feels rather like her felt elephant. Like she’s been ripped open at the seams and her insides pulled out of her. Except now there’s no cake, and no bandages, and no housekeeper. There’s just her and Jack. Hollowed out. Empty. The stuffing ripped out of them. There’s nobody around to stitch them back together.

“Did you see them?” She whispers. “The baby, did you see them before the doctor took them away?”

“Yeah.”

She doesn’t want to know. But she has to. “What were they like?”

“She was perfect.” Jack’s hands are on her, comforting and warm. She doesn’t know how he can bear to touch her. “She was jus’ perfect.”

“A little girl.” _Lucy._

“Yeah.” Jack nods. She can feel him trembling. “Jus’ like- like she was sleepin’. These little fingers, you wouldn’t believe how small, I-“

He breaks off. He can’t. Her head feels damp. It takes her a moment to realise that it’s Jack, that it’s him sobbing into her hair, not just yet more of her being covered in blood.

“I’m sorry.”

“No, Kath,” Jack chokes, “don’ you be sorry, never be sorry, it ain’t your fault, it ain’t-“

“Who else’s?”

Is there something wrong with her, Katherine wonders, that she isn’t crying? She unfists one of her hands from Jack’s shirt and slides it down between them. Her stomach is still swollen. It’s still firm. She hasn’t deflated. Surely she ought to have done, if Lucy were truly gone? Surely that’s why she isn’t crying. Surely it’s because none of this is real. Just a bad dream. She’s inside one of Jack’s nightmares, surely.

“Nobody’s, nobody’s, it jus’… happened.”

It hits her all at once, and she fists her hands in his shirt again and screams into his chest, the tears coming now, a dam breaking. “That’s not good enough, Jack, it’s not fair-“

“It ain’t fair.” Jack holds her through it, stable, a shelter of his arms. “Nobody woulda ever loved that kid more than us. But it happened.”

“How do we live with this?” She sobs. She hears him sob too, feels it in the way his chest hollows out. She’s hollow, now.

“I dunno.” Jack replies, hollow too. “We jus’ keeps livin’, I guess.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One in every eight pregnancies result in miscarriage. So many women deal with this, and nobody talks about it because our society is fucking awful and doesn’t believe that miscarriage has the same emotional impact as losing a child who has already been born. So, if for some reason you’re the person that needs to hear this: you aren’t on your own and the pain doesn’t ever go away, but it does ease with time.


	58. Chapter 58

They say the dead rest in peace. Such isn’t true for the ones left behind.

The world, it turns out, doesn’t stop turning just because they’ve lost their baby, even though it feels as though it ought to. There are things to do. There are so many things to do that Jack doesn’t quite know where to start. And he’s got to be the one to do them, he knows, because Katherine’s done nothing but sleep and cry for hours.

Jack doesn’t sleep at all. Katherine does fall asleep at some point, lying in his arms, exhausted from the trauma. He rests his chin on the top of her head and fixes his eyes on the far wall, on the Santa Fe skyline he painted there in a fit of hope, and tries to cry as silently as possible. He doesn’t know how to do any of this, but like Mayer said, there’s no guidebook for being a good husband and father. Just husband, now, he supposes.

Eventually, with a strength that he didn’t know he possessed, Jack slips out of the bed without waking his wife, something he hasn’t done for months now, and pads downstairs. The clock in the kitchen says five am. Time doesn’t feel right anymore, like it’s stretching and condensing in ways that he can’t understand. It seems to Jack that the ancient Romans had it right, splitting time in two on either side of the birth of Christ. B.C., A.D. He knows that the first one means before Christ, because Katherine told him that, but the second one is some complicated phrase in a language he doesn’t understand. He doesn’t suppose it really matters whether you understand things or not, when they just happen anyway. His life has been split in two. B.L., A.L. Before Lucy. After Lucy.

There’s a plate on the kitchen table in front of him. Katherine likes to set out the breakfast things ready the night before so that she gets an extra few minutes in bed each morning. He can’t believe they did something so normal just a few hours ago. Jack picks up the plate and hurls it across the room, watching as it shatters into pieces against the opposite wall, unbelievably loud in the silence of the darkened kitchen.

Edith wanders into the kitchen a few minutes later, summoned by the crash of the breaking plate, of Jack shattering. He can tell that she hasn’t slept either, but neither of them say anything, sweeping together the ceramic shards and putting them in the bin. Jack realises that there are bloody towels at the bottom of their kitchen bin. He gets a little bit stuck on that, staring down into it until Edith steers him back to the kitchen table and fetches Katherine’s notebook and pencil from the side.

She helps him write a list of all the things he needs to do, then writes the two letters for him, one pleading for a week off work for himself, the other for three weeks off for Katherine. The former tells the truth; the latter only tells a half-truth of ‘serious illness’. Honestly, Jack isn’t sure if Katherine will even want to go back to work after all this, but somebody has to do something.

Jack doesn’t know what he’d do without Edith. She delivers the letters, and, when she comes back, makes him put on actual clothes and shave and do all of the things that you’re supposed to do as a normal human being. Jack’s grateful. He needs her there, his puppeteer, tugging on the frayed ends of broken strings, bringing him through.

Around eight am, he gets himself together enough to wake Katherine. He’s had to go in a few times already, just to settle her back into an uneasy sleep, when she wakes up crying; but he wakes her properly, then, scooping her into his arms bridal-style and bringing her downstairs. He tries to get her to eat breakfast, then holds her hair back and rubs soothing circles on her palm as she throws it back up.

Edith suggests that Katherine has a bath while Jack changes the sheets and he nods, cold, broken, numb, because it’s probably a good idea for Katherine to be clean and be somewhere clean. He won’t risk an infection. He won’t. The old bedsheets smell of blood, spoiling and metallic.

They smell like the Refuge, like iron congealing on concrete, like scrubbing brushes soaked in caustic soda, like salt-filled wounds. And beneath that, the second note of some fine wine turned to vinegar, there’s a smell of decay, too, the kind that lingers in the unwashed, sickly-green crannies of vases after flowers have been left in them too long. It’s the kind of smell that is indescribable in any way other than what it isn’t. It isn’t petrichor, isn’t a healthy sort of green smell. It’s a smell that lingers in the absences, in the liminal spaces, in between moments.

Jack finds a scrubbing brush, almost wishes for the sting of the cleaner they made them use in the Refuge, the one that burned their skin and cracked it open, just so that he could feel something. He’s cracked open, shattered, anyway. What difference would it make?

He focuses on scrubbing the mattress as best he can. It’s rather a lost cause, but they won’t be able to get a new one just yet, so he does what he can and then turns it over. The fresh sheets look clean, spread across their bed, but Jack knows they aren’t, that there are shadows lurking in them like the grey smear that’s left on his paper after he erases a line. It feels like erasure, this.

And then, when it’s all done, the three of them lie on the bed, Katherine sandwiched between Edith and Jack, and stare up at the stars. Jack lets Katherine cry quietly, her face turned into his shirt. Edith grips hold of Katherine’s hand like she’s never going to let go.

Jack’s grateful for that, too, when there’s a knock on the front door, that Katherine has another body to curl into while he goes to answer it. He does so in a daze, finds Mrs. Chavers and Mrs. Ross on the doorstep with an apple pie, asking what all the commotion was last night. Jack doesn’t know quite what to say. Lying would take too much energy. He tells them, blunt as a lead pipe, and their mouths drop open, then spill over with stock sympathies. They press the pie into his hands and leave him be, oblivious to how reliving it over again in his mind almost doubles him over. At least he won’t have to worry about breaking the news to the neighbours. Mrs. Ross will have it being discussed in every parlour on the street before lunchtime.

An hour later, there’s another knock. Jack opens the door, then braces himself against the doorframe, rubbing at his eyes with a tired hand.

“Davey, shit, I forgot you was comin’ over.”

“Yeah, union paperwork.” Davey neatly pressed and pieced together, as always, holds up a stack of paperwork, as if to illustrate his point. He looks happy. He has since Miriam, stupid puppy love. It makes Jack feel a little bit like throwing up. 

“Listen, can it wait?”

Davey frowns. “Is somethin’ wrong?”

Jack looks back over his shoulder then steps out of the door, pulling it closed behind him. Katherine almost certainly can’t hear them, but he’s taking no chances. She’s gone the last ten minutes without bursting into tears, and he’s not going to mess that up.

“Kath, she-“ his voice cracks. _How the hell are you supposed to say this shit?_ “We lost the baby.”

“Oh my-“ David’s eyes widen. He has no idea what to say. What is there to say?

Jack crumbles. He just _can’t._ He can’t do this anymore. Scrubbing at his face angrily, he presses balled-up fists into his eye sockets, presses until he’s flattened the teardrops against his skin and colours explode behind his eyelids.

“Jack it’s okay to-“

“I ain’t cryin’.” Jack snaps. He knows that David means well. The kid always does. But he can’t deal with this. Not today. “I’s jus’…”

 _You just what, Kelly? You’re just being a girl, huh? You’re just sobbing like a kid? Leave that to the baby – oh, except you can’t, because she’s never going to get to cry, is she?_ Jack wonders why the voice inside of his head sounds like Snyder. He wonders why it’s always right.

“You want me to tell the boys?” Davey finally asks, quiet. “Keep them out of the way?”

“Please.” Jack heaves out a sigh, removing his hands from his face only when he’s sure that his eyes, though red and puffy, are dry. “Every time I says it, ‘s like it happens again.”

“Yeah.” David nods, like he understands, even though he doesn’t. Even though he can’t. “Have work-“

“The Journal have given me the week off.”

“Good. Jack, I- I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah,” Jack nods, a silent thank-you, “I is too.”

It takes until eleven for Dr. Graceton to arrive, unhurried and dispassionate with one of his medical students in tow. He doesn’t ask either Jack or Katherine whether it’s alright for the younger man, who introduces himself only as Richardson, to be there, merely stalks up to their bedroom at the top of the house and tells Edith that she has to leave. He tries to tell Jack to vacate the room as well, but Jack puts his foot down at that. He’s still numb, but he isn’t stupid. If Richardson can be in there, then so can he, and he says as much. So, Jack sits next to Katherine and strokes his thumb over the back of her hand while the two men stare at her like she’s in a fishbowl, not lying in a bed with a half-trained medical student poking about between her legs to check for infection. Jack thinks that Katherine must be feeling fairly numb as well, watching her looking at the ceiling through empty eyes.

Numb, at least, is one word for it. Katherine feels as though she’s been carved in stone. Perhaps she is, the petrified former mother, the _omphalos_. There’s no blood on the doctor’s fingers when he pulls them away, but she knows there should be. She scrubbed herself raw in the bath this morning, but she can still feel the blood on her, covering her, flowing out between her legs, nothing she can do to stop it, to stem it.

“Everything looks well, Mrs. Kelly.” The doctor finally pronounces. “I’m putting you on bedrest for a week and then reduced mobility for the week after, but once that’s done you should be good as new.”

Katherine looks as if she can’t quite decide whether she wants to burst into tears or rip the doctor’s head off for his comment. “Good as-“

Jack puts his hand on Katherine’s knee, over the covers, preventing the both of them from punching his lights out. “Thank you, Doctor.”

Dr. Graceton’s eyes flick to where Jack’s hand is resting, and his lip curls. He fixes Jack with a stern stare. “I would… advise _restraint_ in regard to intimacy for at least two weeks. After that, provided there’s no pain-“

“Thank you, Doctor.” Jack cuts him off, his hand once again tightening on her knee in lieu of punching the man, his voice brittle.

It’s almost nice to feel something other than sadness, Katherine thinks, even if it is anger. Because even if Jack hasn’t put the pieces together behind Dr. Graceton’s snide comment, she certainly has. Rose must have repeated that long ago conversation to her husband, must have told him about her and Jack’s ‘activities’. Well, he’s got it all wrong. She’ll be surprised if Jack can even stand to sleep in the same bed as her after all this.

“Mrs. Kelly, I want you to know there are other options now that you’re infertile-“

Someone pours a bucket of ice water down her back. “What?”

Dr. Graceton’s eyes flick to Jack. He shakes his head, just a little. No, he hasn’t told her. Yes, he meant to. No, he couldn’t get the words out. The doctor starts explaining a condition that neither of them can understand the name of. Even if she could understand it, Katherine doesn’t think she would. It’s as if the doctor is speaking to her through an entire ocean of water. She catches only four words in the entire encounter. _You will never conceive._

The words echo around inside of her skull, bouncing off the bone, off her brain. The doctor leaves, at some point. _You will never conceive._ And that’s it, isn’t it? The end of the road. No doubt. _You will never conceive._

When Jack comes back in from seeing the doctor out, those four words are still the only thing she can hear. Jack stops just inside the doorway, waits.

“Did you know?” Her voice sounds as if it hasn’t been used in years. “That I-“

“He told me.” Jack stares at the floor. “Last night.”

Katherine feels herself start to shake, clenches her hands into fists to stop their trembling. “And you didn’t think I had a right to know? That it would be better for me to hear it from you?”

“Kath-“

“No, Jack, you had no right to keep something like this from me!” She’s screaming at him now, she knows, but she can’t seem to stop. _My fault. You will never conceive._

“Don’ y’think I had a reason?” Jack shouts back. He never raises his voice at her, never. “I had to be the one to tell you our baby _died_ , Katherine, y’think I coulda got the next lot o’ words out even ‘f I’d wanted to?”

“I can’t ever have a baby, Jack!”

“No.” Jack spits back, his voice deathly quiet now. It’s like a punch to the gut. “ _We_ can’t ever have a baby. _We._ You an’ me. She was mine too, y’know.” He looks away. He doesn’t want her to see him start crying, even as he whispers: “She was mine too.”

And Katherine can’t be angry with him, not now. Not after that. She’s angry still, angry at Dr. Graceton, angry at the world, angry at God. But she can’t be angry at Jack. The only way they’re getting through this thing is together.

“Come here.” She sighs. Jack looks at her, something unsure in the dark of his eyes, but he comes anyway, sits on the side of the bed. It hurts, it hurts abominably, but she pulls herself into his lap nonetheless, the way that they sit when she reads to him, winds her fingers in his shirt. “You and me.” She feels him relax beneath her, beside her, surrounding her.

“I hurtin’ you?” He asks and she shakes her head.

“I don’t know how you can even stand to touch me right now.”

“I dunno how you can say garbage like that.” Jack snarls, though there’s no anger in it as he tightens his hold on her, pulling her closer and burying his face in her hair, breathing her in. “I ain’t got no kid, no more. All’s I’s got is you, an’ you’s a fool ‘f you thinks I’s lettin’ you go too.”

Her eyes fill with tears. “But you always wanted children. I can’t ever give you what you want.”

“Kath, you’s what I want.” Jack pulls away, removes one arm from around her. Katherine feels the loss like a physical ache, only for him to piece her back together when he takes her chin and tilts her head up to face him. “You’s the only thing I ever want.” Jack doesn’t lie. Not to her. They both know it. His words shatter them both, then stitch them back together stronger. “I didn’t- you ain’t some sorta package deal wi’ future kids. You’s enough for me. You’s always gonna be enough.”

“But-“

“No buts. We’ll figure it out. You an’ me.”

Slowly, so slowly, she nods, her hand coming up to grasp hold of his. “You and me.”

“You an’ me.” Jack leans his forehead against hers. “We’s gonna get through this. You an’ me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The omphalos, or umbilicus mundi, was a hollow stone artefact believed to be the centre of the world and that literally translates to navel. The history of it is really interesting and it has a lot of symbolic weight. I swear that my writing is actually really layered if you have a comprehensive knowledge of archaeology. 
> 
> Thank you to all of you who comment – y’all make my days brighter :)


	59. Chapter 59

Jack doesn’t really remember his father’s funeral. He knows that his father is buried somewhere, but he was buried wherever that somewhere is when Jack was eight and watching the whole proceeding through a haze of tears, so forgive him if he doesn’t remember the exact location of the unmarked pauper’s grave. It turns out that funerals aren’t all that spectacular when you’re a drunk good-for-nothing who nobody cares about. Mrs. Ellis from two apartments down had come along and held his hand, but it was just them and the priest. They had to rope in four men from the parish that neither Jack nor his father had ever met to carry the coffin. Mrs. Ellis had been nice to come with him. She kicked it from typhoid the year after and hers was the only other funeral that Jack has ever been to.

Why, then, he is the one expected to organise this one, is utterly beyond him. But Katherine is on strict bedrest, and if they don’t have the funeral soon then the inevitable January snow will turn the ground to iron before they can bury her and nobody wants that. So here he is, in the funeral home.

It seems as though his life is rather more like that of Oliver Twist than he had realised. What was it that Dickens had written in the scene where Oliver gets handed over to the undertaker? _The atmosphere seemed tainted with the smell of coffins._ Jack’s happy ending has never seemed further from his grasp.

The funeral home is truly as miserable a place as Dickens had suggested. It smells of damp, Jack decides, and leaking gas pipes. The undertaker, who introduces himself as Mr. Houghton and tells Jack that he’s very sorry for his loss despite not looking very sorry at all, shows him through into a dingy little room with more coffins than Jack’s ever seen in his life. The man explains about the range of children’s coffins that they have, but all of the so-called coffins they have for stillbirths are less coffins and more boxes. No point making them a certain shape to fit a body that’s only half-formed, right? Somehow these tiny coffins look so much heavier than the normal ones. Jack picks one at random when his head starts spinning.

He spends most of the tour of the funeral home in a bit of a daze, honestly, breathing musty air and trying not to be sick. Jack is proud of himself, though, for having the presence of mind to take the scrap of green knitting from his pocket and hold it out to the undertaker.

“My wife,” he coughs, “she was makin’ these little booties. She wants to keep one. Have our little one buried wi’ the other. Would – wouldja put it in the coffin with her?” The undertaker nods and lays the half-finished piece to one side.

“Of course, Mr. Kelly. Now, as to the burial plot –“

“Oh, my wife used to be – ‘fore she married me – a Pulitzer.” Jack might as well have told the undertaker that his wife used to be a cat, for the look of disbelief on his face. “She was wantin’ our little girl to go down in the Pulitzer plot. ‘Side her sister, y’see.”

“I’ll need a written confirmation from Mr. Pulitzer for that, sir.”

“Oh. Right.” Jack rolls his shoulders back. “I’ll, uh, get that for you, then.”

The undertaker looks just as disbelieving at that statement, but ploughs on. “And you are happy for the funeral to happen on Sunday?”

“Yeah. Sooner the better, right?” Jack asks, scratching at the back of his neck. Dead bodies, he knows, go south pretty quick. He wants this over and done with quickly, so that Lucy gets some of the dignity she deserves.

The undertaker nods, charges Jack double what he was expecting, and sends him on his way. Which leaves him with something of a problem. A problem by the name of Joseph Pulitzer.

The last time Jack stepped into the offices of the New York World it hadn’t gone overly well. Better, perhaps, than the time before, when Pulitzer had tried to have him thrown in the Refuge and then had him tortured on a printing press, but still not great. Attempted bribery and rejection by the in-laws don’t make for a great lasting memory of the place. But. Katherine wants their Lucy to go down next to her Lucy, had specifically impressed upon him that she wants them to be next to one another, and so he’s going to bloody well walk into Pulitzer’s office and bully the man into compliance. He wouldn’t put much past Joseph Pulitzer, but this? He doesn’t think that even he is that vindictive.

Hannah’s mouth drops open when Jack turns up at her desk with a face like thunder, but she doesn’t hesitate to interrupt Mr. Pulitzer’s _very important meeting_ when he shoots her a glare. Less than a minute later, she escorts him into the office.

There are two men lounging in the lavishly upholstered chairs at the far side of the room, a whiskey decanter and a case of cigars on the mahogany table between them. Both turn to look at him, when he enters, one with sightless eyes. The other man, young, younger than Jack, perhaps, is the spitting image of his father. This, Jack determines, must be Joseph Jr., the only one of his wife’s siblings he has yet to meet. The man wears wire-rimmed spectacles, less ostentatious than his father’s gold ones, and has a moustache, bristly and toothbrush-like.

“Mr. Kelly.” The older Pulitzer greets him. “This is quite the surprise.”

Jack nods, curt, remaining several feet away and tucking his hands behind his back. “Katherine has a message for you.”

“If she wants to speak to me, she may do it herself.” The man retorts, his face contorting into something between derision and disappointment, beginning to turn away.

“She can’t. She’s on bedrest.” Both men look back up at that. Jack sets his jaw. “She- she had a miscarriage. An’ we needs your permission to bury the baby in the Pulitzer plot in the cemetery. Kath wants her to go down next to Lucy.”

Pulitzer gazes at him with milky eyes for a long steady moment, then clicks his fingers. The younger Joseph Pulitzer scrambles, pressing a monogrammed stationery pad and a pen into his father’s hands. The older man scribbles something on the top sheet, his pen flying across the paper in that same hurried manner that Katherine’s does, and then rips it from the pad, holding it out to Jack. “You have my permission.”

Jack must admit, he’d been expecting more of a fight, but he just nods, taking the paper from between the man’s fingers and turning to leave. “Sir.”

It’s only once Jack walks out of the door that Joseph Pulitzer the elder realises that he neglected to ask when the funeral of his first grandchild is planned for.

…

The next week passes in a teary-eyed haze. Esther and Medda slip in and out of the house like ghosts, dropping off more food than they can bring themselves to eat. Katherine sleeps and cries. Jack breaks three more plates against the wall.

…

In his entire career as a minister, which comprises quite the number of years, at this stage, Reverend Bates does not think he has ever presided over a more well attended funeral. Which is strange, really, for the child of an orphan and a disgraced heiress who told only a few select people who happened by the house of the funeral date. God, Reverend Bates firmly believes, works in mysterious ways. He’s seen little more mysterious that the motley crowd around this graveside.

Only a few wear mourning dress, most of them merely having turned up in dirty and torn everyday clothes. There’s a crowd of grimy newsboys, all of the Manhattan lads, yes, but a few from over Brooklyn way too. There’s a Jewish family, a group of women in the faux-fur coats and red lipstick of showgirls and whores, an older lady who touches Mr. Kelly’s head like a benediction, calling him _honey_ in a voice like hot lemon tea when he thanks her for coming. Three respectable looking gentlemen in the proper black suits and hats, with ink-stained fingers, and another similarly dressed man with clean hands who the reverend recognises as the son of Mr. Hearst. There’s Mrs. Kelly’s sister, little Edith Pulitzer, not so little anymore, her clothes black and her face grey. And then Mr. and Mrs. Kelly.

Jack has his arm around Katherine as if he’s holding her up – he is, a little. She isn’t supposed to be out of bed for this long, yet, not really; he knows she’s in pain and it’s killing him. Jack doesn’t cry, at the funeral. It wouldn’t be right, to be seen doing so. Not in front of his boys, not when Katherine needs him to be strong. She doesn’t seem to know how to do much of anything other than cry these days. She hates herself for it. Still, she’s grateful when Crutchie sidles over halfway through and presses his grubby handkerchief into her hand.

When the box goes in the ground and people have tossed handfuls of dirt onto it, they drift away on the cold winter breeze. Eventually, it’s just Jack, Katherine, and Edith, stood by the graveside with the reverend. Edith says all the right things, doing everything that Katherine doesn’t have the energy to and Jack doesn’t know how to, thanking the reverend for a lovely service and commenting on weather.

And then Katherine asks the question that they’ve all been holding on to this entire time: “Why?” She looks at the reverend, her eyes glassy with tears. “Why did He do this?”

The reverend blinks his bulging eyes. Jack’s expecting a lot of bullshit answers. He’s expecting _he needed more angels in heaven_ or _your daughter is in a better place._ He isn’t expecting what the reverend says next.

“The consequence of sinful unrepentance is death. Be that sin disobedience, or sins of the fathers, or failing to comply with God’s design. There is still hope, if you repent.” The reverend nods, aiming for somewhere between wisdom and sympathy, patting Katherine’s shoulder with pudgy fingers. “Perhaps you might start by not working through your next pregnancy. There are both medical and spiritual reasons for that, my child.”

 _My child? My **child**? _Jack seethes, feels rage bubbling red-hot in the pit of his stomach. What does this man know of children? He isn’t the one who’s just buried his. He has no right to call either of them that, but especially not Katherine, not his wife. Not a woman who never got chance to say that to her baby.

“Edith, take your sister to the carriage, please.” Jack says, his voice a low growl, his eyes never leaving the reverend. Whilst this has the added benefit of making him look as intimidating as hell, it also means that he doesn’t have to look at Katherine’s face. He knows what the expression will be there – hurt, fear, self-hatred, her mouth making that little ‘o’ that it does – and he can’t stand to see it. He’d snap. “Y’can go on home. I’ll walk.”

Edith shoots him a wary look, but she does as she’s told, letting a still pained Katherine lean on her as they make their way back towards where the carriages are parked outside of the cemetery. As they retreat, leaving the two men alone, the reverend has at least the good grace to look nervous, the folds of fat at his neck jiggling as his swallows heavily.

“Mr. Kelly, I understand that you may find my spiritual guidance hard to swallow –“

“‘F you weren’t a minister, you’d be swallowin’ your own teeth right now.” Jack growls, stepping right up to the other man. They’re about the same height, but Jack knows that he can throw a far better punch. He wonders whether Katherine would tell him off for punching a minister and decides she probably would. Threats it is, then. “You ain’t goin’ to speak to my wife like that ever again. Your ‘spiritual guidance’, ‘s bullshit. I don’ ever wanta see you speakin’ to my family again. Now _get the fuck away_ from my daughter’s grave.”

Jack waits until the reverend has walked away before he slumps down. He doesn’t know quite how long he sits there, the cold from the ground seeping up and into his flesh.

“Excuse me, sir?”

Jack’s head snaps up. Stood over him is a man dressed all in black, the only clue to his identity the square of white which peeks out beneath his collar. He makes to get up. “Sorry, I-“

“I’m not here to kick you out.” The man frowns, then holds out a mug, the steam coming off it clouding the frigid air. Dragon’s breath, they used to call it, to get the younger newsies to drink the bitter coffee that would warm them, at least for a little while. “I thought you might want a hot drink.”

“Oh.” Jack blinks, settling himself back on the cold ground and wrapping his hands around the proffered mug. “Uh, thanks, I guess.”

“May I?” The man asks, gesturing at the ground beside Jack.

Jack squints up at him, silhouetted against the bright, cold sunlight, then shrugs, unsure. “Seats ain’t ticketed.”

The man takes this as permission enough and settles himself down beside Jack, cupping a second mug of coffee in his own hands. “A relative?” He asks, jerking his chin towards the fresh grave.

“My daughter.”

He sees the man’s face change out of the corner of his eye, but he doesn’t say any of those stupid stock phrases like _she’s in a better place_ or _I’m sorry for your loss._ What the fuck business does anybody else have being sorry? They didn’t kill her. Jack’s sin did, apparently. Him being the child of a dockyard worker and a whore. Him being a juvenile delinquent. Him being him. Instead, the man just asks: “How old was she?”

“Miscarriage. ‘Bout fifteen or sixteen weeks. Give or take.”

The man’s eyebrows raise. “Your wife?”

“Alive. Fuckin’ wrecked by it, though.” Jack looks over at him and frowns. “You some sorta priest?”

He must be, Jack figures, but this man doesn’t look like any kind of clergyman that he’s ever seen. He’s too young, for one thing, probably only in his thirties, and looks too happy for somebody who spends their days talking about hell and delivering food to sick old ladies.

“Baptist minister.” The man smiles, gesturing to his clerical collar. “Do you think I’d be wearing this if I wasn’t?”

“Fair ‘nough.” Jack nods, turning back to stare at the fresh mound of earth that’s supposed to give him somewhere to direct his grief towards. He hopes it’ll start doing its job soon, because it sure as hell isn’t working yet. He just stares straight ahead, as if there might be an answer under the loose soil and not just his daughter’s dead body. “‘F you’s here to tell me that ‘s our fault she’s dead, we’s already heard it.”

“It’s not your fault.” The man says. It isn’t sappy or sympathetic either. Just like it’s a fact.

“Yeah?” Jack laughs, humourless. “That ain’t what the reverend said.”

“Then the reverend is wrong.”

“He reckons it’s ‘cos I ain’t a believer an’ my wife kept workin’ through the pregnancy. I know… I know it ain’t Kath’s fault, plenty o’ women keep workin’ an’ they’s jus’ fine.” Jack sighs, scrubbing the hand that isn’t holding the coffee mug over his face. Finally, he turns his head to look at the man. “D’you think ‘s mine?”

“No,” the man shakes his head, staring Jack right back in the eyes, “I don’t think it’s your fault.”

“Then whose fault is it?” It’s not angry. Jack doesn’t think that he has the strength to be angry.

“I don’t know. We live in a broken world, but sometimes I’m amazed by its brokenness.”

“Ain’t that the truth.” He pauses. “I ain’t bothered ‘bout no God. I dunno if he’s there, but if he is then he don’t care ‘bout me. I jus’… her faith makes Kath so strong, y’know? I don’ want her to lose that. Think it might break her.”

The man frowns a moment in concentration. “There’s a lady in my congregation – we meet at that church, right over there,” he points at a red-and-white painted church, the spire of which is visible over the top of a few rows of houses at the far side of the cemetery, “at eleven on a Sunday – who lost three children to miscarriages. Perhaps your wife might like to talk with her? It might be helpful for her to have another woman in her life who understands the pain of losing a child.”

Jack blinks. This minister wants them in his church? That’s a new one on Jack. The people at Katherine’s church – because it is hers, it’s not his – look at him like he’s some dog shit they’re going to have get their maid to clean off the bottom of their shoes. They’ve started looking at Katherine like that, too, since she married him, and somehow that’s worse. “You… you wouldn’t mind us comin’ along?”

“I’ll introduce you.” The man tells him. “There are some men your age as well, married, who you might enjoy chatting with. Just while your wife talks to Margery.”

“Yeah.” Jack nods slowly. “Thanks.” They sit, side by side, in silence for a long time before Jack turns to the other man again, a rueful smile on his lips. “Please don’ tell me you’s some sorta angel in disguise right now. I don’ think I can take no miracles at the minute.” _Not unless they’re going to bring Lucy back._

“I’m certainly no angel.” The man laughs. “God puts people in the right place at the right time. We might not understand it right now, but he works through people, not angels.”

…

When Jack gets home, Katherine is back in bed. It’s been days, but she’s still in pain, still weak from the blood loss, especially after a day like today.

He always thinks that Katherine looks like an angel, but most of all when she sleeps. His fingers itch to draw her when she’s like this, all white cotton in the hazy afternoon sunlight; soft, pale skin; her hair, a halo, spread aflame across the pillows. _He works through people, not angels._ Jack thinks that Katherine might be the closest he’s ever going to get to them being one and the same.

There’s a book abandoned in her hand, half-slipped from her fingers. When he picks it up to put it on the bedside table, the pages are damp. Her tears have smudged the ink of the tiny print, and Jack has to squint and shift the words around to make them make sense. _Many are the afflictions of the righteous; But Jehovah delivereth him out of them all._ He wonders whether it’s possible for Reverend Bates to count as another affliction on top of everything they’re already going through. 

“Jack?” There’s a rustle of sheets as she stirs behind him. “You’re here?”

“What?” Jacks asks, turning round and dropping to his knees beside the bed, brushing her hair out of her face with gentle fingers. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Because it was my fault.” She whispers. “Reverend Bates said so. I kept working, I kept sinning –“

 _I should have punched him. I knew I should have punched him. Put that bastard in a fucking grave instead._ “Reverend Bates is wrong, y’hear me?” His tone makes Katherine jump and he feels her flinch under his hand at the way he snarls. He can’t help it though, because she needs to hear it, to know that it isn’t her fault. “I ain’t sittin’ here an’ listenin’ to you say it’s your fault, ‘cos it ain’t. This ain’t no consequence o’ sin, this ain’t nothin’ to do wi’ you workin’. ‘S awful, but ‘s done, an’ you tearin’ yourself up ‘bout it ain’t goin’ to make it no better.”

Katherine just looks at him for one, long, terrible moment. And then she leans forward and kisses him. It’s an awkward position, her laid out on the bed and him knelt beside it, but they manage it.

“Please tell me you didn’t hurt him.” Katherine pulls away and she smiles at him. She actually smiles at him. It’s not a big wide show-your-teeth smile, not by any means, but it’s a smile all the same. It’s the first time he’s seen her smile since it happened. “You looked like you were ready to punch him.”

He can’t help but smile back, echoing her glimmer of amusement. “I didn’t punch him. I had some… strong words.”

“ _Jack_.” It’s more perfunctory than anything else, said in the knowledge that she ought to admonish him rather than actively feeling as though he deserves it.

“We ain’t goin’ to that church no more.” He sets his jaw, unrepentant. “I’s found us a new one.”

“What?”

Jack? Volunteering to go to church? Unheard of. Sure, he’s been letting her drag him out of bed and to service each Sunday quite amiably (which, for Jack, involves many… _distraction attempts_ to try and get her to stay in bed, at least a few of which always work before she manages to get them both out of the door looking vaguely respectable), but she was expecting him to use this as the last straw for them to stop going. She wouldn’t blame him. Everything about her faith that has before seemed so unshakable seems to be crumbling around her. Of course Jack would choose this time to ground himself, rock solid, and hold her up. He’s always been there, when she’s needed him.

“There was this bloke – a minister – who came an’ sat wi’ me. At the grave.” Jack tells her. “He’s invited us to go to their church. They’s got other ladies there, like you, who’s lost kids an’ can’t have them. An’ he said it ain’t your fault, or mine.”

“And… you want to go.”

“‘F you’ll come wi’ me.” He shrugs, reaching across to twine his fingers with hers. “We’s gotta do this together, remember? You an’ me.”

She smiles at him again. It feels strange, like her facial muscles have forgotten how to do it, but it’s a good kind of strange. A really good kind of strange. A bit like them, really. “Okay. You and me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep. I swear things will start to look up for these two soon. 
> 
> In the meantime, if you want to further depress yourself, I've just posted the first chapter of a new AU - but it's very dark, please read the tags and don't read it if you're sensitive any of the stuff. However, I'm quite pleased with it, so if you want to check out [let us go then, you and i](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29737713/chapters/73142691) then I'd be very happy. 
> 
> As always, comments make my day <3


	60. Chapter 60

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not hugely happy with how this turned out, but oh well. We're on the home stretch now, friends - 10 chapters to go. Comments, as ever, make my days brighter x

Walter, Daniel, and Ernest don’t edge around Jack when he comes back to work. Even though he’s out of his head thinking about Katherine at home without him, they treat him just the same as they did before – stealing his good drafting paper and teasing him about his inability to keep his skin free from some smudge of ink or graphite for more than ten minutes together. Honestly, Jack is grateful. It’s nice to have some semblance of normalcy, especially when it feels like he’s treading on eggshells at home. He’s grateful to Edith, too, who has delayed returning to school for another week until Katherine’s allowed to move around normally, as Jack can’t afford to take the two weeks the doctor ordered off.

They eat dinner together, the three of them, in the evening quiet of the kitchen, after Katherine manages to walk downstairs without doubling over in pain or leaning on Jack, so they’re all doing pretty well. And then there’s a knock on the door.

Jack answers it to the last person in the world he’s expecting to see.

“Mista Pulitzer?”

The man isn’t quite fully blind yet, but he’s carrying a cane with a gold topper in the shape of a wolf’s head, presumably to tap out his path. Jack’s always hated the kind of men who carry canes, even the blind ones, though he knows that’s bad. It just seems so odd to him that something that’s caused him nothing but pain can be just a fashion statement to another man.

Mr. Pulitzer sweeps his hat off his head. “I wanted to, ah, express my condolences.”

Jack just blinks at him for a moment, then remembers himself, stepping aside. “Come in.” He leaves the door for the man to shut himself – he might be used to butlers doing such things for him but Jack isn’t going to play those games – and indicates for him to follow him into the living room. “Katherine, we’s got a guest.”

Katherine is stretched out on the sofa, she’s more comfortable that way, at the moment. When she looks up, her mouth drops open. “Father?”

He coughs a little, straightening his spine. Hair greying, eyes blinded, he still looks every inch the soldier that travelled from Hungary to fight for America. “I- I just came to express my condolences. I know what it is to lose a child.”

“Your condolences?” Katherine’s voice is low and dangerous. Jack knows what that means.

“Katherine-“ He tries, but it’s hopeless.

“Your condolences?” Katherine snaps, propping herself up on her elbows from where she is on the sofa. Jack remembers, very suddenly, why he sometimes pictures her as an avenging angel rather than the kind that stand around nativity scenes looking pretty. “You think that your condolences make a jot of difference? My daughter is dead and you didn’t even know I was pregnant. You’ve never bothered with us before, why the hell are you here now?”

And, to be fair, she’s got a point. If it were him (or, honestly, if Katherine was in full health), Pulitzer would have a broken nose. Even without such consequences, the older man looks startled, taken aback by his daughter’s vicious temper. Sure, Katherine and her father had fought like cat and dog when she lived at home, but her time living with Jack has made her firmer in her convictions, if it’s possible. She’s not about to be pushed around and Jack pities any man who so much as tries to. Mr. Pulitzer’s thoughts clearly are not in the same vein, though, as he scowls and goes to admonish Katherine for her outburst.

“I do not appreciate-“

“Father?” Edith steps into the room, holding a pack of cards, stopping in her tracks at the sight of her father.

That had been Katherine’s idea, to distract the three of them from the long empty nights that seem to stretch interminably ahead of them. Katherine and Edith knew games like whist or old maid, which Jack had never heard of, but, once having played them, discovered that the ‘appropriate’ games for high society ladies were ridiculously boring. He promptly broke out a box of matches to stand in for betting chips and taught both of them how to play poker and blackjack, which ended up being more enjoyable for all involved. Somehow, Jack can’t see either his wife or his sister-in-law inviting their father to join in the game.

“Edith?” Pulitzer turns, blind eyes scanning for a blur of colour that might be his middle daughter. “What are you doing here?”

Edith schools her face into the kind of haughty indifference she has mastered, that she keeps in a jar ready to put on at a moment’s notice, and juts out her chin. “I’m staying with Katherine and Jack for the Christmas holidays.” She purses her lips. “Which you would know, if you read my letters.”

Pulitzer stands, caught between two pairs of furious eyes. “I think it might be best for me to leave.”

The hurt that flashes across Edith’s face damn near breaks Jack’s heart. He hates Pulitzer. The man hasn’t seen Edith in more than a year and he can’t stand to be in the same room with her for more than a minute.

“I think so too.” Katherine replies, her mouth pressed into a thin line.

With a nod, Pulitzer turns on his heel and walks out of the door. It takes until the front door slams behind him for Jack to gather himself enough to follow the older man.

“Mista Pulitzer? Wait up!” Jack bursts out of the door, swearing under his breath as his shoeless feet hit the frosty pavement. Joseph Pulitzer stops in his march down the street, turning around to face Jack as he runs up. “Kath, she, uh, she ain’t herself. You should come back. Y’know, sometime. Visit her. When she’s more up to it.”

Pulitzer doesn’t quite manage to hide the surprise that flits across his face, but quickly schools himself back into indifference. “Your wife hates me, Mr. Kelly.”

He’s not quite successful. There’s an edge to his voice, bitterness, perhaps, or even sadness. It doesn’t really matter. Jack doesn’t care how Pulitzer feels.

“No. That’s me. I hate you.” He says, folding his arms across his chest. “But you’s her dad.”

“She does not want me around.”

“An’ I don’ fuckin’ care!” Jack snaps, running both hands through his hair, making it even more crazed than usual. He says the next part to the pavement, to his sock-clad feet that stand on it, with his hands clenched into fists in his hair. “I jus’ lost my daughter. You’s got a chance to get yours back. I’d be in your shoes in a heartbeat, so get your shit together an’ show up for her.”

There’s a long pause. Jack’s eyes flick up to the other man, muscles tensing themselves to run if the man comes at him with that cane for his rudeness. And then Pulitzer says something that neither of them were expecting.

“When is convenient for me to call again?”

Jack blinks. He hadn’t exactly been expecting that whole speech to work, honestly. His brain flicks through what they’ve got coming up… and the fact that Smalls is currently sleeping on their sofa because times are hard. They’d been left alone to grieve for a while, but the world doesn’t stop for mourners, and normal life had to come back sometime. And, whilst neither he nor Katherine have said it aloud, they’re both grateful. It’s good to have family around. David and Miriam. Crutchie and Race. Henry, Albert, the rest. Daisy and Medda. They’d never survive this without them.

“We ain’t got nobody comin’ for dinner on Thursday. Y’can come then.” Jack nods, decisive. Pulitzer returns the gesture, more reluctant, an incline of his head but there, nonetheless, before turning to leave. At his retreating form, Jack calls out. “You should bring Constance. Kath an’ Edith would love to see her.”

He walks back into the house with one thought on his mind: _Katherine is going to kill me._ Sure enough, when he walks back into the living room, hovering in the doorway, Edith has retreated to some unknown place elsewhere in the house and Katherine is pacing up and down, wearing a hole in their hearth rug, despite visibly wincing at every step.

“I cannot believe him!” She snarls the second that Jack appears in the doorway. “He denounces us for months, as then as soon as tragedy strikes he comes along to lord it over us-“

“Ace.” Jack sighs, his hand braced against the doorframe.

“- like he has any right to after everything he’s put us through –“

“Sweetheart-“

“- and to waltz in and say that he knows what it is to lose a child –“

“Katherine!” He finally snaps. It’s not quite a shout, not quite, but it’s enough to make her turn around, shocked at his tone. “I’s told him to visit again. On Thursday.”

“You _what_?” She growls. Oh, he’s in trouble, alright. “Jack Kelly, you had no right –“

“No, but I _was_ right.” He says firmly, walking forward and taking hold of her hands guiding her back to sit on the sofa. She’ll rip her stitches at this rate. “Katherine, angel, I hate the guy too, okay? But he’s your father. He was hurtin’. Genuine, like.”

“My father doesn’t know what it’s like to hurt.” Katherine turns her face away.

“Everybody knows what ‘s like to hurt, love.” Jack says, crouching in front of her, still keeping hold of her hands. “‘S the only thing we’s got in common.”

Slowly, oh-so-slowly, Katherine turns back to look at him, something unreadable on her face. Disentangling one of her hands from his, she reaches out to stroke his face, relishing the way that his eyes flutter closed as she traces the contours of him, suddenly understanding why he seems to spend half his time trying to capture her in pencil lines. If she had any talent with art, then she’d do the same.

“When did you get so wise, hm?”

“Oh, it was the weddin’, see?” Jack grins up at her, wickedness in his eyes as he takes hold of a curl that has slipped from her updo, framing her face, and gives it the tiniest, gentlest tug, teasing her. “What’s mine is yours an’ all that. I’s got your wisdom, an’ you took my stupidity-“

He breaks off, laughing, ducking away from the hand she raises to swat at him, splaying himself out across their living room rug instead, smugly pillowing his head on his hands and closing his eyes, a smile still on his lips. It grows wider when he feels Katherine’s warm body press against his. He lets one arm flop out from under his head, welcoming her, but otherwise stays very still, letting her position herself so that she’s comfortable. Dr. Graceton has assured them that she’s making excellent progress, but he knows that moving just a hair the wrong way still hurts. It’s only when she’s stopped squirming, her head resting on his chest, that he wraps his arm around her, staring up at the white of the living room ceiling, illuminated by the glow of the fire in the grate. He’s just glad that they’ve found their way back to one another. He’s been lying in bed each night like a tin soldier, keeping his arms and legs to himself until she seeks out his embrace. It wasn’t until the night before, when she asked him, in the vulnerability of sleep’s twilight, if he didn’t want to touch her anymore, that he’d realised that him trying to respect her boundaries and not to hurt her in his sleep had come across all wrong. He’s touched her more in this one evening than he has done in the past few days put together.

“That is decidedly not what happened.” She tells him. Jack can hear the smile in her voice and he finds himself sending a _thank you_ out into the evening, not to anything specific, just there. Something like praying, perhaps.

“You ain’t tellin’ me you wouldn’t have taken a bit o’ dimness to get all o’ this?” He cricks his neck to squint down at her, grinning as he gestures to himself.

“All of what?” Katherine scoffs, shifting her head from his chest to the rug beside him so that she can look at him; first his face, then, playfully, the rest of him as if assessing. “Please, I’m way out of your league.”

Jack grins, delighted. “Come off it, Ace, I’s seen the way you looks at me.”

“When?” She snarks. Katherine tries very, very hard not to look at his lips. She can tease him all she likes, but they both know that she can’t resist him. It’s written right across his face as he smirks at her, a face that’s so close to hers that it’s making her head spin.

“Now.” He presses forward, kisses her open-mouthed and lazy-tongued and delicious, because they have all the time in the world and the rest of their lives to live out together.

Hell, Katherine’s missed this. She’s missed Jack. Even though the thought of intimacy in the further sense sends her body cramping up in pain and terror, she’s missed this. She needs this. Because Jack shows the people he loves that he loves them through touch – the hand that lingers on her knee or the small of her back, the way that he tugs her into his lap to read to him – and he’s been afraid to touch her, for fear of hurting her. He’d told her so, which, whilst heart-breaking, is substantially less so than why she’d thought he was drawing away from her. But they’re okay, because he’s just leaned forward and kissed her and it’s as exciting and exhilarating as the first time they kissed.

“Thank you.” She whispers as he draws away.

Jack’s pupils are blown wide, the way they always are after he’s kissed her like that, and Katherine revels in the knowledge that she did that. “Really, Ace,” he smiles, slow and a little bit dazed, “the pleasure’s all mine.”

“Not that, you nitwit.” She laughs, batting at his chest, then nuzzling her face into the crook of his neck. “For talking to my father.” And then, with a bout of sick guilt, for her own audacity to be happy, after all this: “And for this. I’ve missed this.”

“Missed what?”

“Us. Being happy. Being close.” Her words don’t draw a reply from him, but his arm tightens around her a little and her turns onto his side to wind his free hand through her hair. She has to ask, though. “Can… can you be happy with this? Just us?”

“Sweetheart,” he sighs, and she can feel his warm breath on her skin, “I’s got everythin’ I’s ever wanted right here.”

“But… children. Family.”

“We is a family, Mrs. Kelly.” He tells her, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. “We’s got a marriage certificate to prove it. An’ we can still have kids. ‘S plenty o’ orphanages around. When we’s older, when we’s ready, we’ll get a kid. A kid like I used to be, ‘cept this one won’t ever know what it’s like to be cold, or hungry, or unloved.”

And the thought honestly hadn’t crossed her mind. She’s been so caught up in it all, the loss of Lucy, of everything she represented, that she hadn’t even thought through the possibility.

Lucy was the future that her and Jack have been planning since they realised that they wanted forever, not just one night in a penthouse in the sky. She’s been what they’ve been building towards throughout all of this – their careers, their passion projects, yes, important, but nothing so important as the two of them and the family that they were going to build. Lucy was everything, and now she’s gone, taking with her Katherine’s ability to conceive and tearing up the tentative future that they’ve spent more than a year sketching out together. It’s not just Lucy. It’s the promise that Lucy was, the part of both of them that bound them inextricably together.

But they already have that promise. It’s sealed around their fingers in gold. A promise written in blood and sweat and tears that they have pooled together.

The loss of Lucy will stay with them like the loss of her sister has stayed with Katherine; a pebble in each of their shoes as they walk through the world, sometimes enough to break an ankle, sometimes unnoticeable. But she isn’t their future, something to strive towards. She isn’t their past, to be forgotten. She’s just a part of them, loved and lovely, and theirs.

And one day, when they’re older and they’re ready, they can have another child to be loved and lovely, not one from her womb, but no less theirs for it. They can do this together. They will be stronger for it.

Jack pulls away from Katherine, smoothing her hair back off her face and searching her eyes. She’s never seen him so anxious. “Can you be happy wi’ that?”

“Jack, I’ve never wanted anything more than I want this. Than I want you.” She’s never meant anything with more of her soul in her entire life.

“For sure?”

“For sure.”


	61. Chapter 61

Jack isn’t actually expecting Pulitzer to turn up. Kath’s more than filled him in on exactly how many times her father has let her down throughout her life. But, he hopes. Jack’s good at hoping, he’s lived on hope a long time. Hoping, this time, pays off.

When Jack opens the door on Thursday evening, tieless and with ink-stained fingers, the first thing that happens is that he is hit with an armful of Constance Pulitzer. He’s pretty sure it could be categorised as nothing short of throwing herself at him. To his credit, Jack fights down the panic in his chest, breathing in and out through his nose how Katherine helps him to do after a nightmare – which are ever more frequent, these days – and rationalises. It’s just Constance. Her touch won’t hurt him.

“Constance.” Pulitzer snaps, glaring at his youngest daughter for such impropriety. Constance ignores him entirely, which Jack supposes is a natural consequence of barely seeing your children.

It’s at that exact moment that Jack realises that what he feels towards Mr. Pulitzer isn’t so much hatred as resentment. That this man has been given six beautiful children who he cares nothing for, whilst Jack has nothing. But he fights that down, too, because he doesn’t have nothing. He has Katherine, and she’s everything.

“Mr. Pulitzer.” He nods, over Constance’s head, to the older man, before gently prying Constance’s arms from around his waist and grinning down at her. “Hey, Constance.”

“I missed you, Jack. Father says that Katherine is here? And Edith? I have not seen either of them in an age!” Constance grabs his hand and starts marching them along the hallway, leaving Mr. Pulitzer to let himself in. “Is this yours and Katherine’s house? It’s smaller than I expected, but I like it, it’s pretty.”

Jack tries not to let Constance’s words smart. But still, he’s ashamed. Even renovated, this house is nothing like what Katherine will have grown up expecting. When he’d asked her, the other night, about Edith’s feelings towards Henry, she’d said that the girl valued comfort over freedom. And whilst his wife is nothing if not a freedom fighter, he wishes he could make her more comfortable. It’s strange, really, as this level of comfort is more than he ever dreamed of.

“Katherine!” Constance screeches upon entering the living room and seeing her older sister curled in the armchair.

Before Jack can even get his mouth open to tell her to be careful, Constance launches herself across the room and throws her arms around Katherine. Jack winces, can see she’s hurting, but Katherine hugs back nonetheless. But even that doesn’t last long, because then Edith shoves her way past her father in the doorway and lifts Constance off her feet in an enormous bear hug.

Jack turns away. It feels like a moment that isn’t meant for him, this intimate reunion. Clearing his throat, he invites Joseph to sit down and goes to fetch drinks and check on dinner. Katherine shoots him an apologetic look, knowing that traditionally he would be the one relaxing in the armchair and her hosting, but they’ve never been very traditional. They share such things. Besides, it isn’t exactly relaxing when she has to stay in one position to avoid pain.

Such an arrangement is clearly, however, not appropriate, when Pulitzer asks, as they sit down to dinner: “This is very nice, Katherine. Did you make it?”

Katherine responds airily: “Oh no, this is all Jack. I clean, he cooks, it works out better that way.”

Pulitzer looks even more put out that not only does his daughter not have staff to do the cooking for her, but that she’s again failed in her feminine duties. Edith, bless her, covers the moment, declaring: “Yes, because Kath only has to lay an eye on something to burn it and Jack attracts dirt.”

Jack pulls a face of mock-indignance and, casting a quick glance at where his wife and her father appear to be having a staring contest, surreptitiously flicks a pea at Edith. She flicks one right back, grinning.

“Edith,” Joseph finally tells her, not looking over and so, thank goodness, not seeing the exchange of peas, “don’t be rude.”

“She’s got a point,” Jack jokes, “but thank you, Mista Pulitzer.”

“Why don’t you have a cook, Jack?” Constance pipes up. “Surely that would be easier.”

Both Katherine and Jack cringe, though for vastly different reasons. Jack because it’s yet another example of his failure to provide for Katherine, something which must be abundantly clear to her father at this juncture. Katherine because she knows what Jack is thinking and how ridiculously untrue it is.

“Constance –“ she goes to admonish her little sister, but Jack beats her to it, giving Constance a kind grin, the sort that Katherine thinks makes him look ever so handsome, his eyes crinkling at the corners.

“I enjoy cookin’ sweetheart, ‘s relaxin’. Ain’t you never done none’?” Constance shakes her head. Katherine wouldn’t be surprised if her little sister had never even set foot inside a kitchen before today. “You’s goin’ to have to come over an’ do some wi’ me an’ Kath one weekend then, hm? We could get Mrs. Jacobs’ biscuit recipe?”

Constance’s face lights up like a Christmas tree. “Can we, Katherine?”

“Of course.” Katherine nods, then shifts her eyes to her father. “You’ll have to check with Mother and Father though.”

“Father,” Constance wheels around, almost toppling off her chair in the process, “can I?”

Mr. Pulitzer presses his lips together. Jack can tell that he wants to say no, but that the weight of his three daughters’ gazes is bullying him into something like submission.

“I suppose it wouldn’t be entirely inappropriate.”

Constance squeals with delight, then carries on eating. The meal continues in much the same manner, straight-backed, neat knives and forks, elbows tucked in. Jack tries his best to copy his wife’s table manners, thanking his lucky stars that she hadn’t insisted on them having five different types of cutlery when they moved in together. One knife, one fork, and one spoon is quite enough for him, thank you very much. But still, it feels performative, like there’s something looming in the middle of the table that none of them is acknowledging.

Edith is the one who breaks it. “Cards?”

“Edie –“ Jack winces, eyes flicking to Joseph. He doesn’t know the man particularly well, but somehow he doesn’t think that letting him know that he taught two of his daughters how to play poker will raise him at all in the man’s estimation.

“Yes, let’s.” Katherine interrupts, a cheeky glint in her eyes that Jack just knows spells trouble. This is both a large part of why he loves her and also the reason that he wants to slither under the table. “Father, will you join us?”

“I will just observe. My eyes are not what they used to be for close work.”

“I’ll get the matches.” Edith declares, hopping up from her seat and tripping over to the mantelpiece above the range, going up on tiptoes to reach the box of matches.

“Matches?” Joseph frowns.

Jack sees his opportunity and snatches it with both hands. “Well, we could play one o’-“

“No, my love, it’s perfectly fine.” Katherine lays her hand on his knee under the table, smiling at him. Is she trying to give both men at the table heart attacks, seriously? “We all prefer poker anyway.”

“Poker?” Pulitzer’s voice comes out as a squawk, but Katherine just waves a dismissive hand.

“We only gamble matchsticks, Father, it’s not like we’re playing with real money.”

Eventually, after many, many rounds of cards, Constance delighted with the new game despite not entirely grasping the concept of bluffing, they migrate to the living room, where Constance sits beside Jack on the sofa and promptly falls asleep draped across him, which Edith finds thoroughly amusing. It, therefore, falls to Jack when the time comes for Joseph and Constance to leave, to carry the girl out to the carriage. As Jack, assisted by Edith in the opening and closing of doors, navigates his way out of the house whilst trying not to wake the sleeping girl, Pulitzer pulls Katherine aside.

“You should visit your mother. She would be glad, I think, to see you.”

Katherine purses her lips, folding her arms across her chest. “She told me that I should not call as it would distress you.”

“It will not distress me.” Her father sighs. It’s late in the evening, he is undone, vulnerable. “I am distressed because I feel that I have lost another of my daughters.”

“I warned you of it.”

“And I did not listen.” Joseph nods. “I am sorry.”

And Katherine has no idea what to do with that. _Sorry_ is never a word that has passed her father’s lips, at least addressed to her, before. She wouldn’t be surprised if this is the first time he’s ever said it in his life.

“I – “ she starts, then stops. What is there to say? Sorry doesn’t change the way that he’s treated her. Sorry doesn’t mean that this time he’s being genuine. “ Where does this leave us?”

“I do not know.” He sighs. “Trying again, perhaps, if you will allow me.”

She can’t bite her tongue at that. “You _tried_ last time.”

Joseph Pulitzer flinches, actually visibly flinches, at her words, as if they’re bullets that she’s pelting him with. “I failed. May I not try again?”

 _Failed_. She didn’t even know that was a word in the Pulitzer vocabulary either. Failure was never an option. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps and don’t you dare ever stop striving for more, because the second you do that you’ll start to fall. Except Katherine doesn’t want more, she doesn’t need more, she has everything necessary for contentment.

“There will be no more bribery?” She raises a brow.

“None.”

“And no more derogatory comments about Jack?”

“No.”

Her father shifts uncomfortably, a prisoner waiting for sentence to be passed. He has handed her the gavel. Katherine nods. Strikes it down. “Very well, we will try. You may come for dinner again next week.”

He looks at her through milky eyes, surprised, unable to see her expression but his own features making things perfectly plain. “Thank you, Katherine.”

…

The following day, Miriam turns up on the doorstep with the most enormous Victoria sponge cake to ever exist. When told she oughtn’t to have, she declares that seeing as the walk that she and Katherine had agreed to go on, in a few hastily exchanged notes prior to Christmas, had been temporarily postponed by Katherine’s illness, she was ‘bringing the party to her’. Between her and Daisy, Katherine feels as though she’s doing rather well.

Rose knows, of course, she must do, her husband was the one to deal with it all, at the end of the day. But Katherine hasn’t heard so much as a peep from her. Not even when she was absent from church the prior Sunday for the funeral. In a sick sort of way, Katherine is kind of glad. She doesn’t think she could stand seeing another woman glowing and excited when her own womb is empty. For a child that had scared her so terribly when she discovered her presence, Lucy had quickly become what Katherine wanted most in the world. It’s terrible, sinful jealousy, but she can’t help it. And yet, despite all that, Katherine wishes Rose would call round. Just so that she knew the woman cared.

Daisy and Miriam, on the other hand, have been wonderful. She’s honestly starting to think that they’re all in collusion, because there’s always somebody around to distract her, if she needs it – Medda or Daisy or Miriam or Edith or any one of an endless supply of newsies.

So, Katherine cuts two wodges of cake, setting the rest in a tin on the side to make Jack’s day when he gets home from work, and sits down with Miriam to regale her with the tale of her father’s awkward dinner with them.

When Katherine finishes, Miriam, brushing the cake crumbs off her fingers, smiles a bit. “Suddenly David’s relationship with my father seems wonderful.”

“Oh, yes, he met your parents last night, didn’t he?” Katherine exclaims, setting her own empty plate on the little table beside the armchair. “How did it go?”

“My mother loves him, my father hates him, and he turned up wearing a kippah in case my parents were more Orthodox than his.” Miriam deadpans.

Katherine can’t stifle a snort. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t laugh.”

“Oh, believe me, I laughed.” Miriam rolls her eyes. “Ima thought he was wonderful because he was his wonderful self.” Katherine can’t help but smile at that. The two of them are too sweet, honestly. “He helped wash the dishes and set the table and said the berakhah and was painfully nice, but Aba still didn’t like him. Apparently not being able to fish is clearly a great failing in a potential husband, even when one does not live in rural Virginia.”

Miriam’s family, Katherine has gathered, are solidly middle-class. Miriam didn’t have a governess, but she did finish school, hence her place at law school. They don’t have round-the-clock staff, but they do keep a part-time maid. Her father works in a banking office, but can afford to take them on holiday once every other year to visit family upstate and go fishing. Fishing, apparently, is his big passion, but despite his best efforts neither Miriam nor her brother have taken up the interest.

“I wouldn’t mind, but David _tried_ to sound interested,” Miriam continues, then drops her voice in a poor imitation of Davey, her imitation of him being at least two octaves lower than his actual speaking voice, “ _no, sir, but I’d love to learn how to fish,_ and that still wasn’t good enough!”

“You’re his only daughter, Miriam.” Katherine laughs. “He’s bound to be protective. Surely your father couldn’t find anything else bad to say?”

“Apparently he’s too quiet.” Miriam frowns, as if she’d never considered that being too quiet was something a person could be. “I pointed out that I talk quite enough for the both of us, though, and that seemed to shut him up.”

To be fair, that isn’t something that Katherine can argue with. Davey and Miriam are incredibly similar in that regard, extremely quiet around strangers (though Miriam is substantially less socially awkward) and incapable of shutting up when around people they like. Instead, she says:

“See? They can’t have too many complaints – he’s a kosher law student who helps your mother wash the dishes. He’s every parent’s dream.” 

“Fair.” Miriam inclines her head. “How are you doing? You go back to work soon, don’t you?”

Katherine is pretty sure that if somebody laid a stethoscope to her chest at that moment, they would hear her heart sigh. “Next Thursday. I’m dreading it.”

“I’m sure people will be sensitive.” Miriam grimaces.

“People might be, if they knew.” She sighs. “They just think I’ve been ill. I’d be fired the second they found out I had a pregnancy, never mind a miscarriage.”

Miriam’s mouth drops open. “But surely now you’re no longer pregnant-“

“It’s not fair, but it’s the truth.” Katherine shrugs.

Miriam sits in her armchair, sips at her tea. “Not to pry, but do you and Jack need the money?” She edges. “Surely you could quit and look for something elsewhere?”

And no, Katherine supposes that her and Jack don’t need her wage. It’s a pitiful amount anyway, and it isn’t as if she wouldn’t be working ever again. Jack makes enough to support them both, and is very proud of the fact. He’d back her up, she knows, if she floated the idea. There’s no question of that.

“Perhaps. I’ve been working on the first draft of a novel for some time now, just in the spare moments and I’ve found that since –“ her voice cracks, she coughs, continues, “- since Lucy passed, I’ve been spending more and more time on it. But it’d never be good enough to publish.”

“I don’t believe that for a moment. Lots of publishers are open to female novelists, Katherine. You should write, enquire. It can’t hurt.”

_And, well, that’s something to think about._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A word to the wise: if you are going to write an incredibly long fanfiction to process the death of a loved one, make sure that you aren’t going to lose another loved one just nine chapters from the end. Who knows, there might be a fucking sequel at this rate.


	62. Chapter 62

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all of your lovely messages yesterday - I really, really, appreciate all of them. In return, here is the bittersweet content for all of you Henry/Edith shippers.

“You know that I could stay longer. If you feel like you need it.” Edith says, rolling up a pair of stockings and pressing them in between two folded dresses in the trunk.

Katherine finds that there’s something quite enjoyable about being able to help Edith pack for school in way that she didn’t get to do last time. Still, she sits with her back to the wall that Jack painted with hopeful green trees, leaning against it, hoping that if she can’t see it then it isn’t there at all.

“Thank you, Edith.” She smiles, folding a skirt. “I’m so grateful for everything you’ve done, I don’t know how we’d have got through without you. But I _can_ walk about perfectly well on my own now and you do need to go back to school.”

“I know.” Edith groans, flopping back on the bed, the old mattress creaking ominously. “I’d just rather stay here.”

“You can come and visit again at Easter, if you’d like.”

“Really?” She sits back up, eyes wide.

“I know that this hasn’t exactly been a… fun Christmas holiday.” Katherine doesn’t look her sister in the eyes as she says it, but she doesn’t mean it any less for focusing on the shift she’s folding. “But you’re always welcome with Jack and I.”

Edith gets up off the bed and comes to sit down next to Katherine. And then she does something that she hasn’t done in a whole year. She hugs her. It’s quick and embarrassed, but it’s there. And then they go back to packing up the trunk like it never happened.

Jack gets home from work, they have dinner, they sit in the living room and read. Edith stretches out on the sofa with her book, feeling deliciously illicit in the fact that, unlike at home or at school, she’s allowed to put her feet up on the furniture. Jack and Katherine sit in the armchair, Katherine quietly reading to him as she tucks herself into his chest. They’re working their way through the collected works of H.G. Wells. It’s become routine, this, over the past couple of weeks, the three of them. Edith knows that this quiet companionship is what she will miss the most.

Around ten pm, Katherine falls asleep on Jack, the book slipping from her fingers and falling with a thud to the floor. She’s much better, but tires more easily now. One of Jack’s arms is already around her shoulders, but he slides the other under her legs and carries her to bed. He’s gone so long that Edith almost doesn’t think he’s going to come back and say goodnight. But then he walks back into the room and collapses back into the armchair, running a tired hand over his face.

“Is she still asleep?”

“Yeah.” Jack sighs. “That corset’s a damn nightmare to get off though, but she complains it’s sore to sleep in.”

“They are.”

He stares into the fire a little while, then pulls her out of her book, asking: “D’you get an allowance, Edie? Like Kath used to?”

“No.” She closes the book slowly, puts it down. Edith can hear a voice in the back of her head, a voice that has a suspiciously Hungarian accent, that asks whether Jack wants to steal from her. She dismisses it. Jack isn’t like other poor people. He’s always nice to her. He’s not poor anymore. “We only get those once we’ve finished school. Father says they are not necessary before then.”

“This is for you then.” Jack nods, producing an envelope from his pocket and leaning forward in his seat to pass it to her.

Slowly, Edith leans forward, takes it. “What is it?”

“‘S enough money for the train back from your school to New York.” Jack coughs, leaning back, looking into the fire so that he doesn’t have to look at her. “So’s you can get to us, ‘f you needs to.”

Jack isn’t good at saying thank you. He’s best at saying it to Katherine, occasionally to Medda. But in general, he’s not good at saying it. That doesn’t mean that he doesn’t feel it. He just isn’t good at saying it. Saying thank you means that you’re in somebody’s debt, that you owe them something. You don’t want to be in somebody’s debt when you’re on the street. So, Jack isn’t good at saying thank you. But he hopes that Edith hears it.

“I really like you being part of my family.”

It’s so utterly unexpected that Jack doesn’t quite know what to say. Edith is lot like he used to be, in a strange sort of way; she doesn’t often express emotion. He credits Katherine for drawing that out of him, for letting him know that it is, in fact, okay for him to not be okay all the time. But Edith still has all these walls up. And she just pulled a brick out of one of those walls and peeked through.

So, he nods. “I really like you bein’ a part o’ mine too.”

“Your family is slightly more… eclectic than mine.” Edith laughs a little.

“Eclectic?”

“Varied. There’s a lot of different kinds of people.”

“It ain’t ‘bout blood.” Jack shrugs. His family isn’t normal. He knows this. It doesn’t make it any less of a family. It makes it the most important kind of family, because his and Katherine’s family have held them up through all of this, through the loss of Lucy, in a way that the Pulitzers (other than Edith, of course) never did. “‘S ‘bout who you let be important.”

They sit together in silence a little longer before, on some unspoken word, both getting up and heading off to bed. Jack thinks that everything’s going as well as it can be, given that they lost their child just a few weeks ago. Katherine is doing better, he’s repressing things, they’re doing fine. And then they aren’t.

He wakes in the middle of the night to find that Katherine isn’t in the bed with him. Even though they start off their nights apart, now, Jack waiting neat on his side of the bed for Katherine to initiate contact, terrified of hurting her, of pushing too far, she always does. They always end up sleeping entwined together. But she isn’t here, and he feels it like an ache. The bed is still warm, from where her body was. But she isn’t there. His heart jumps into his throat, blood pounding in his ears as he gets up and rushes down the stairs. He tries, as he does so, to tell himself that everything is fine. She’s just gone to the bathroom. Or she needed a drink of water. She definitely isn’t collapsed somewhere, bleeding again. Definitely not. He goes down the stairs two at a time.

He huffs out a breath when he sees that the light is on in the living room, a glow that spills out from beneath the door; slows his steps, his breathing, his heart, then pushes the door open. Katherine is curled up in the armchair, reading a book.

“Hope you ain’t readin’ ahead wi’out me.” He says, stepping inside.

Katherine whips round, then relaxes. Rolling her eyes, she reaches out her free hand to him, twining it through his and setting the book aside. “You scared the life out of me.”

“C’mere.”

Jack tries for a smile as he picks her up, but doesn’t quite manage it. He could, of course, ask her to get up so that they can get into their normal position curled together in the armchair, or, even simpler, just sit on the sofa. But he just nearly had a heart attack trying to find her in their own bloody house, he wants his hands on her, wants her in his arms so that he can make sure she’s there. And Katherine must be able to tell, because she just leans her head against his shoulder and lets him arrange them in the armchair.

She nuzzles her nose into the side of his neck and closes her eyes. Katherine doesn’t notice when he picks up the book that she was reading – some sort of household guide - and flips it open to the page she had been on. It takes him a minute or so to pick up the thread of it, but his heart cracks a little as he sorts the shapes on the page into something like meaning.

_Expectant mothers must be careful to avoid all activities which may cause stillbirth or other issues with the pregnancy, such as overreaching to hang a picture, taking a warm bath, riding a bicycle, sleeping with the arms above the head, having a tooth extracted, being excessively happy, running a sewing machine by foot, lacing a corset too tightly, washing clothes, bathing in the ocean..._

Bloody hell, is there any aspect of daily life that won’t cause miscarriage? Jack sighs. “Kath, darlin’.”

Katherine blinks her eyes open, sees that he’s read it, flushes. “I didn’t -” she blinks again, this time fighting tears, swallows, “I know. I know what Dr. Graceton said, I just… maybe if I had stopped working-”

“It ain’t your fault.” Jack says, laying the book aside and bringing his hand up to stroke her face. “You’s got to let her rest.”

“I don’t want to forget about her. I know I wished her away at the start, but I didn’t mean it-“

“Kath, I know you didn’t mean it. You was scared, ‘s normal. An’ I ain’t askin’ you to forget.” Jack laughs a little, though there’s little humour in it. “Hell, I ain’t never goin’ to forget her. We jus’… we’s gotta not torture ourselves over it no more.”

And the worst of it is that Katherine knows that reading these household guides that tell her that, once pregnant, a woman is nothing more than a walking incubator isn’t going to do her any good. They just make her feel like a failure. She had one job, they say, she just had to let a baby grow inside for a few months and then push it out. No big deal. Except she couldn’t even get that right. Katherine wonders how long it will take Jack to realise how useless she is.

But she knows that Jack feels the same, as much as he’s trying to be strong for her. So, she reaches out, strokes his face like he did hers.

“You’ve been having more nightmares lately. Don’t pretend that you aren’t torturing yourself over it.”

“My nightmares won’t never go away.” Jack tells her, his face open, eyes open, never looking away. “But I don’ hafta make the daytime a nightmare for myself as well.”

“What are they about? The nightmares?”

She’s never actually asked. All this time, the two of them breathing through the aftermath on their mattress, and she’s never asked. She can guess, of course. There are enough scars on his back to tell her most of it. Jack talks in his sleep sometimes, too, mostly incoherent mumbling but sometimes cries of pain or defiance. She can put the pieces together, it’s her job, after all. But she’s his wife. It’s her job to let him know that he can talk about it too.

“The Refuge, mostly. Losin’ you. You gettin’ hurt or somethin’.” Jack shrugs, staring down at the lace of her nightgown rather than at her, chewing his lip. “‘S stupid.”

“You’re right, it is stupid.” Katherine says, taking his face in her hands once again, forcing him to look at her. “You’re never going back to the Refuge. And you’re certainly never losing me.”

…

“Edith!”

It takes her name being called a second time for her to realise that it’s not some other person called Edith being summoned, but her instead. She hasn’t been expecting it, see, because Jack walked her to the station on his way to work and she’s been sitting in the café just across the street waiting for her train to start boarding ever since. She wheels around, searching for the source of the noise, only to see Henry waving to her from the corner of the building. Edith sets her trunk down in front of the porter and tells him which train she’ll be on, then hurries over.

“Henry? What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to see you.” He smiles, pushing off the stone wall of the station. “‘Fore you went back to school.”

“Oh.” He wanted to see her. That’s… odd. “Well, here I am.”

“Yeah.” Henry shifts his weight, his shoulders a little hunched, then asks her a question, staring determinedly at the flakes of mud clinging to his boots. “CanIkissyou?”

Edith blinks. Surely he hasn’t just said what she thinks he said. “I beg your pardon?”

“Jack says you’s gotta ask first.” He replies, crooked teeth digging into his bottom lip, finally meeting her eyes. His eyes are green, she realises, and startlingly so. She has always wanted to have green eyes.

“Of course not.” She sniffs. “We are in public and not engaged.”

“Oh.”

They’re in public. It’s completely inappropriate. But he looks so heartbreakingly disappointed, like she’s ripped his dreams out his arms and stomped them into the floor.

She casts a quick look around. They _are_ tucked away in an alcove of the station wall. She nods at him. “Go on then.”

It’s nothing like Edith is expecting, honestly. She’s absolutely certain that if anybody was watching them that it wouldn’t look like when Jack kisses Katherine. When Jack kisses Katherine (which is really all that she has as a point of reference, at this juncture, because it’s not exactly like her mother and father go in for any sort of public affection), it’s all hands, like he can’t get enough of her, like the press of his lips on hers is altogether too much and not enough and he has to wind his hands through her hair or wrap his arms around her waist to make sure she doesn’t disappear. When Katherine kisses him back, she cradles his face or fists her hands in his shirt like she can’t bear to live without him. There’s none of that here.

Henry doesn’t touch her, not at all, just stoops down and brushes his lips across hers, nothing more than a peck. Edith wonders whether she ought to grab ahold of him like Katherine does with Jack, whether boys like that sort of thing. She decides against it. Too forward. And then it’s done, just like that, and she feels a little bit underwhelmed, if she’s being frank. She blinks, heat rising in her cheeks, Henry shifting from one foot to another in front of her.

“I could, um, write to you?” She offers. It doesn’t feel quite right, somehow, just to get on her train and leave straightaway.

“I can’t write. My readin’ ain’t too good, neither.” Henry grimaces. When he looks up at her, there’s resignation in his eyes. “I ain’t a fool, Edith. I know this ain’t what you want. There ain’t many people like Kath an’ Jack, who can make somethin’ like this work.”

She doesn’t want it to be true, but it is. What was it that she had said to Katherine? Comfort over freedom? She had been right. As much as she adores the loving warmth of the Kelly house, she would prefer to live somewhere where the warmth is always guaranteed to come out of the radiators, rather than it being a guessing game as to the plumbing working or whether they have enough money to pay for it.

“They are rather special, aren’t they?”

“Yeah. But, we’ll be friends, right? When you comes to visit again?” He looks so terribly hopeful. Edith knows that it will be different when she comes back at Easter. Henry will probably have found some other girl to walk about with and kiss and explain the rules of baseball to. They won’t be the same. She pretends anyway.

“I would like that.”

“Okay. You travel safe, yeah?” He tips his cap to her. She nods.

“I will. Goodbye, Henry.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That awful list is taken directly from a household guide of the period. Yes, apparently being excessively happy during pregnancy can cause miscarriage. You heard it here first, folks.


	63. Chapter 63

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not a huge fan of this one... sorry.

Two days later, Katherine and Jack walk to church alone for the first time in weeks. He says that he misses Edith, and, Katherine realises, she does too. But it’s a new church, and a new beginning, and Edith will be back at Easter.

The church is smaller than Jack expects, after attending Trinity, which is both beautiful and hulking, looming over the buildings that surround it. This one is small, barely raising itself above the surrounding houses, built of sturdy red brick with a white-painted spire. Inside, the foyer is warm and wood-panelled, and a lady in her late fifties greets them at the door, introducing herself as Auntie Marge. Whose auntie she actually is, Jack isn’t terribly sure, but they go along with it and let her shepherd them into a pew beside her.

She talks a mile a minute to Katherine, who, thank goodness, is sat between Auntie Marge and Jack, so he doesn’t have to do very much talking. Instead, the woman chatters on, explaining that she was married but her husband died three years ago and she doesn’t have any children but she has lots of nieces and nephews and she’s basically the extra grandmother of every child in the congregation and Katherine _must_ come over for tea some next week and finally: “Tell me a bit about yourself, then.”

“Uh. I’m Katherine.” She blinks, trying to keep up with the energy and compassion that seems to burst out of this woman’s every orifice. “I’m a journalist.”

“A journalist! How wonderful – I do think it’s fantastic the kind of career you can have as a young woman these days.” Marge clasps her hands together, giving Katherine a wide, beaming smile. The inside of Katherine’s chest feels warm, somehow, with such approval. “Will I have read anything you’ve written?”

“I write for the New York Sun? Under K. Plumber?”

“No, you never covered the strike!” The woman’s face lights up. “That’s incredible, good for you, ducky.”

With that, the first bars of the first hymn ring out from the organ, and Marge is silenced. That is, at least, until the verse starts, at which point she begins booming the words to _Abide With Me_. What Marge lacks in tunefulness, she certainly makes up for in enthusiasm. A few of the other men in the congregation aren’t singing which makes Jack, at least, feel better. He would try, honest, he would, because Katherine has said he has quite a nice voice when she’s caught him quietly singing to himself whilst painting, except by the time he’s puzzled out the words on the page of the hymn book the verse is over and done with. Still, it’s a relief when he can just sit down and listen to the sermon.

The man who he met in the cemetery, who introduces himself as Reverend Michael Byrne, gets up and stands behind a lectern sort of thing at the front of the building. There is stained glass in the church windows and as he sp eaks the light on his face lets bright colours spill from his mouth.

“In John 9, we hear these words: _And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man, or his parents, that he should be born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘Neither did this man sin, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.’ When he had thus spoken, he spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and anointed his eyes with the clay, and said unto him ‘Go, wash in the pool of Siloam’. He went away therefore, and washed, and came seeing._ ”

Despite knowing that nobody is looking at him, Jack has never felt quite so seen. He knows, of course, that the reverend probably picked out this passage to speak on because he knew that they might attend the service. Or maybe it’s entirely a coincidence. But, still, it feels as if it’s something he’s been supposed to hear for a long, long time. Maybe this is what people mean, when they say faith; trusting in the knowledge that when they attend church on a Sunday, they will be taught something which will change them, forever, for the better. It feels like having a warm blanket draped around his shoulders.

Perhaps, Jack wonders, they also mean community, because the reverend wades through the congregation right over to them just as soon as the service is over and shakes Jack’s hand with a big smile on his face.

“Sir! I’m so glad that you could make it – I’m afraid I didn’t catch your name when we last met?”

“Jack, Jack Kelly.” He smiles back, nudging Katherine forward with the hand he has resting on the small of her back. “An’ this Katherine, my wife.”

“Lovely to meet you.” Katherine smiles, sticking a hand out to shake the Reverend’s.

The reverend, easier to see now, now that Jack isn’t looking at him through tear-filled eyes, smiles at them. He looks younger, even, than Jack remembers, no older than thirty-one or thirty-two, with dark straight hair, olive skin, and a short beard. He still smiles far more than any minister that Jack’s ever seen, in a way that makes Jack a little bit nervous. This man isn’t like Reverend Bates; he could match Jack in a fight. Sure, he seems nice, but Jack forces himself to hold back a little in his trust. Just in case.

“I see you’ve already met Mrs. Margery Evans?”

“Indeed, they have, Reverend.” Marge smiles, joining the conversation.

“Well, Marge, this is the very lady I mentioned to you.” The reverend gestures to Katherine.

“Oh, ducky, how nice! Come on, let us you and I go and get a cup of coffee, hm?” Marge leads Katherine over to a little trestle table where a pot of coffee and plate of biscuits are set out, being picked at by various members of the congregation. She pours them both a coffee, tugs Katherine into a quiet corner, and straight out asks about the miscarriage.

Katherine expects to find this approach too forward, but she just doesn’t. If anything, it’s refreshing, being able to just tell somebody about it, other than Jack, of course. Everybody has been wonderful, but they’re all treading on eggshells around her, too afraid to mention Lucy or anything remotely to do with her. And Marge _gets it_. She tells Katherine that it’s normal to feel the way that she does and explains that she had three miscarriages, the horror of which Katherine can scarcely imagine. One has wrecked her. Three would kill her. And Marge, who before wouldn’t shut up, actually turns out to be a pretty good listener. So, when she puts her hand on Katherine’s shoulder and asks her how she’s doing, Katherine surprises even herself with her honesty.

“A bit wrecked. I’ve never needed the hope of Christ more, but it just feels so far away.”

“Wait a moment –“ Marge says, jumping to her feet and wandering over to a small bookshelf set up against the partition wall that separates the church from its little foyer, “- we have a little lending library here of different books… aha! Take this home and give it a read. There’s a passage on one of those dog-eared pages that might help.” Marge holds out a book in a worn burgundy binding. In half-faded gold letters across the front is the title: _Collected Sermons of Charles H. Spurgeon._ “And when do you go back to work? Are you back already?”

“No,” Katherine shakes her head, taking the book with something like reverence, “Thursday.”

“You must come for tea on Wednesday, then.” Marge declares decisively, handing her a slip of paper with her address scribbled on it. “Here is my address, I shall expect you at three. In the meantime, anything you need, anything at all, you must contact me. Especially if you don’t have your family around.”

“Thank you.” She says, and she means it. “Thank you so much.”

When Katherine walks out of the church, into the little courtyard, blinking in the bright sunlight, it takes her a moment to spot Jack. When she does, though, _well_. He’s laughing.

Before Lucy rarely an hour would pass without a laugh passing his lips at least once. Since Lucy, he’s only really, properly laughed once. This? This is wonderful. She won’t say anything, of course, because she knows how she felt when her sister passed, the guilt that wracked her when she laughed or smiled or forgot her sadness in the first few weeks after her death. But still. He’s laughing. Jack is at his most handsome when he laughs, tall, relaxed, eyes crinkled at the corners, his grin wide and bright. He’s stood in a huddle of a few other men around his age under a tree in the corner of the courtyard, a few of whom have their arms around women. She wanders over, tentative, not wanting to intrude, to ruin his fun. But his face lights up when he sees her and he beckons for her to join them.

…

“Hey.” Jack greets her, slipping back into their bedroom that night.

He’s been locking up the house, hanging the keys on the hook by the door so that they can find them quickly. It’s silly, Katherine knows, that still after a year she’s terrified of being trapped inside of a burning house, but Jack never says anything about it, and he always remembers to put them there. Smalls is sleeping on their sofa at the moment, having hit on hard times after getting a nasty cough and wiping out his savings on medicine. The two of them have chatted about it, offered to pay for the medicine, but Smalls is too proud to hear of it, so instead Jack bids him goodnight each night as he locks the front door.

“Hey.” She smiles from their bed where she’s curled up with her book.

“‘S that what the lady from church gave you?” Jack jerks his chin toward the book.

“Yes.” She turns the book so that he can see the cover. “It’s a book of sermons.”

“Fascinatin’.” He deadpans, wrinkling his nose as he slides into bed beside her.

Katherine rolls her eyes but snuggles into him anyway, finding the cradle of him between his arm and his chest and nestling herself there. “There’s a passage that Marge wanted me to read.”

“Go on then.”

“Out loud?”

“Y’know I love you readin’ to me.” Jack replies, leaning his head back on headboard.

Katherine clears her throat. “I think it’s this underlined bit that she meant: _Hope itself is like a star – not to be seen in the sunshine of prosperity, and only to be discovered in the night of adversity._ ”

Jack stays very quiet for a very long time, so long that Katherine would almost think that he’d fallen asleep if she didn’t know the pattern of his breathing so well, the way that it slows into something deeper when sleep takes him. She just waits, leaning herself against him. He’s so much better than he used to be, but she still sometimes feels like saying something just slightly wrong might send him into one of those black moods that chase him out of the house to walk around and cool off for hours.

“D’you think she’s up there somewhere?” He finally asks. When she turns her head to look at him, he has his eyes open, staring up at the ceiling of their room.

“In heaven?” She asks, following his eyeline. “Or in the stars?”

“Either.” Jack doesn’t suppose it really matters, so long as she’s somewhere better than here.

“I like to think so. I suppose she’s like a star – we can’t always see her, but she’s there.”

Katherine waits for his response, but it’s a long time coming. She hears his intake of breath, the one he has before he asks a question, but he holds it a long while, as if mulling it over, rolling the question over his tongue like a fine wine, judging it, savouring it, wondering whether it’s worth the price tag.

“An’…” Jack clears his throat, shifting beside and beneath her, “is that what God’s like?”

Katherine hesitates. _He really does know how to ask the difficult theological questions, doesn’t he?_ It’s scaring her a little, why he’s asking, after everything with church earlier. She worries that perhaps it’s been too overwhelming for him, that it’s pushed him even further away, that he feels so betrayed by God that he can never return to a place of worship again. And the awful thing is, she understands. She understands why Lucy isn’t here, in her head, knows that it’s all part of the plan. But the rest? That feeling of betrayal, of _why me?_ That she knows all too well.

“Sort of. Why do you ask?”

Jack just shrugs in response, clamming up tight. Katherine could kick herself for shutting him down like this. But when she glances up at him, that curtain that he draws around his features has left a chink of light exposed. She clings to that, nudging him with her foot.

“Hey. It’s me, Jack. Talk to me.”

“I still ain’t sure ‘bout this whole _God loves you_ thing, so don’t start, alright?” He shifts again, raising a hand defensively. “I jus’… I feels like there’s somethin’ missin’. Don’t know if it’s ‘cos o’ Luce, but y’know, I tried prayin’. In church, today. I ain’t never felt nothin’ before, not when the nuns used to make us. But this time I felt… somethin’.” He doesn’t quite meet her eyes. It sounds stupid, he knows, and he wishes that he has all of the words that Katherine does so that he could explain it properly. Katherine doesn’t reply, as if she’s waiting for him to say something else, to describe it more fully, whatever the hell it was, a spiritual experience or some shit like that. Jack swipes at his nose, shrugging again, and laughs a little even though it isn’t very funny at all. “An’ I figures, ‘f God’s the one who’s got our Lucy, it probably pays to be on his good side, right?”

She rolls onto her front, half draping herself over him, shaking her head in wonder. Jack shoots her a glance, worried somehow, just a little, but she just takes his face in her hands, his good, strong face, and kisses him.

“You never cease to amaze me, Jack Kelly.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The biblical translation used is accurate to the period and the denomination of the church they attend. Also, we stan Charles H. Spurgeon. Comments, as always, are greatly appreciated x


	64. Chapter 64

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have another chapter today, because bereavement leave = faster editing. Also, can you tell I love Greek mythology? Because I freaking love Greek mythology. Comments make me very, very happy.

If Katherine had thought that getting back to work would make her feel better, she was sorely mistaken. Don’t get her wrong, she needs something to fill her days. At first, while she was still physically recovering, she’d needed the time off. But now, almost back to normal (physically at least, though not in any other sense of the word), she needs something to occupy her mind. It works too fast as it is, never mind when every neural path it decides to walk down takes her back to the night they lost Lucy.

At first, it’s almost comforting, stepping back into the smoky ink smell of the newsroom, the hustle and bustle of it, shirtsleeves and double-page spreads and the clattering of typewriter keys. She has missed this, the industriousness of it all, the feeling that she is making a difference. Except, she isn’t. She’s not making a difference. She knows this all the better when Mr. Ross calls her into his office.

As an editor, Mr. Ross gets his own office, rather than cramming around overflowing rows of desks with the other reporters. His office isn’t large, not by any means, barely more than a few square feet of floor cut off from the newsroom by a flimsy partition wall, but it’s the principle of the thing. Mr. Ross takes great pride in his principle of an office.

“Mrs. Kelly,” he looks up at her when she enters and Katherine winces at the name – she loves being married to Jack, but she is _not_ his property, “I was starting to think that you’d died.”

 _I didn’t die. My baby did._ “The letter was very clear that I would be off work for three weeks, Mr. Ross. And, please, my professional name is Plumber.”

Curt, to the point, toeing the line of civility. Even since her marriage, Katherine is careful with her male colleagues. For some of them, Mr. Ross included, the gold band on her finger is little deterrent. Most of them, luckily, have been shallow enough to leave her be since she came into possession of her scar, but Mr. Ross is, alas, not among them. Rings, it seems, mean little to him, given the number that encase his fingers, which bulge around them like sausages stuffed too tight into their skins.

“Come, it’s not like we stand on the formality of professional names here.” Katherine bites down several retorts and waits. Mr. Ross looks her up and down, then raises an eyebrow. “I hope you are well again.” _If you want to know, Mr. Ross, you would do well to ask directly,_ Katherine thinks, _else you’re going to make a lousy reporter._

“Quite. My apologies for the sudden absence.” The man’s face falls at her failure to volunteer any further information. It would be impertinent of him to ask further, though that never seems to have stopped him before. When he doesn’t, Katherine continues. “I am quite ready to take on another story, however.”

“Well, Johnson,” _ugh, he’s still here? good grief,_ “has been covering your usual material during your time off, so you’ll be on the ladies’ pages for the time being – nice things to ease you back in, flower shows, that sort of thing.” Mr. Ross tells her, passing over a sheet of paper with a few leads on it and then returning his eyes to the typewritten sheets in front of him, a covert dismissal.

Katherine fights the urge to tell him that she doesn’t need to be eased back in. Her stubbornness has never gone down terribly well with Mr. Ross’ particular brand of angry editor-ism and she’s angry, not stupid. Still, she can’t help but agree with Crutchie and what he’d pointed out a few months ago: that Johnson deserves to die a slow and painful death at the bottom of a deep, dark hole. In fact, Katherine would like to amend that – and, if the thought that she would rather like to suffocate both Johnson and Mr. Ross with the very flowers they have predestined for her to review isn’t a particularly Christian thought, then she’s just going to have to pray for forgiveness after she commits those murders, isn’t she?

“And I will get back to my usual material when, exactly?”

Mr. Ross looks up, raising a mildly irritated eyebrow. Quite frankly, he looks like he’s unimpressed that she has the audacity to even exist, never mind be asking him such impertinent questions. “Mrs. Kelly, you’ve just had three weeks off. You’re really in no position to be making demands.”

“I’m not demanding anything, sir.” Katherine purses her lips, desperately reminding the tiny devil sat on her right shoulder that _no,_ hitting Mr. Ross with her handbag will definitively _not_ improve any part of this situation. “I merely wish to know when I can expect to return to my usual fare.”

“When I see fit.” Mr. Ross snaps, shuffling his papers at a rather obnoxious volume. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m rather busy.”

Katherine walks out of Mr. Ross’ office, head held high, before she can start agreeing with the tiny devil who, at this point, seems to hold a permanent ticket to the front row seats at her hellscape of a workplace. She will not give him the satisfaction. She will not give any of them the satisfaction.

She plonks herself down at the end of one of the long desks currently scattered with a few of the older reporters, most of whom have long since abandoned their jackets and waistcoats and stretched themselves out to proofread in their suspenders and shirtsleeves. Katherine stoically refuses to remove her sweater – she gets enough comments about her appearance without actively _inviting_ speculation, thank you very much – and sets to taking her frustrations out on the typewriter. They want flower shows? These are going to be the best damn flower shows they’ve ever seen.

Despite the fact that there really is only so much she can do to try and make flower shows interesting, Katherine refuses to let her determination dim. Her quick visit to see Jack at work under the pretence of delivering some lunch item he’d carelessly forgotten is enough to see her through until the evening.

And that evening, as Jack figures out exactly what it is that a businessman means when he tells him that he wants something for the lobby that looks _fresh and modern but with an old-time classic look, preferably in oil paint_ , Katherine dives under their bed and pulls out a stack of paper to load into her typewriter. They’re only going to give her flower shows? Well then, she’s just going to have to take her talents elsewhere.

The half-phrases and pieces of dialogue scribbled in the back of her ever-present notebook come together under the typewriter keys. She feels rusty, not in her typing, but in her brain. But rust scrapes right off, so she keeps on writing. And slowly, slowly, the jigsaw piece paragraphs start to fit together into something – something, she’s not quite sure what, but it’s something, and it’s something that she’s proud of.

Such a routine continues for a few weeks. Katherine refuses to be downtrodden, fuelled the by past evening’s sentences, paragraphs, chapters, and writes like a woman possessed. She reworks old pieces rejected by the suffrage magazine, tones them down, slides them across Mr. Ross’ desk. When he slides them back covered in red ink, she slides over another two, three, ten, the next day. He’ll have to give sometime.

But so does Katherine, and she gives on a Friday evening a few weeks into her return to work.

See, Katherine walks home through a park. She used to take a shortcut through some back alleys, but since becoming the wife of a union leader who might be less than well-liked in those particular parts, Jack has managed to persuade her to walk through the shady park where the _nice_ ladies go to walk their tiny dogs and gossip about the latest scandal.

However, when she sees them - Dr. Graceton, Rose, a _pram_ \- Katherine is unashamed to admit that she seriously considers secreting herself behind a nearby tree. Honestly, in that exact moment, it seems like an entirely sane and even quite desirable idea. But she is not a coward, so she keeps her head high and carries on walking toward them, though simultaneously making a mental note to not walk back home from work through this nice part of town anymore, with its wide, tree-lined pavements and neat white houses and people that she knows. She’ll take her chances with the Brooklyn boys over the Gracetons any day, no matter what Jack’s protests are.

“Rose, Dr. Graceton.” She nods, once she has come within a few feet of them.

Rose looks up in surprise, opens and closes her mouth a few times like a particularly stupid goldfish, before Dr. Graceton inclines his head, his face like stone. “Mrs. Kelly.”

Katherine wonders when exactly he went from being pleased to see her to clearly despising her very presence. Still, she has to be polite.

“You’ve had your little one.” She nods towards the pram.

The pram itself is a thing of beauty, very different to the second-hand one which Mrs. Baker from down the street had offered to her and Jack, one which had served every one of the Bakers’ six children, bore the war wounds to prove it, and, Mrs. Baker assured them, would be able to handle at least three more babies. Rose has always had the best of everything; Katherine shouldn’t have expected any less. Plush velvet interior, polished silver handles, sleek black exterior. It’s nicer than half of the furniture in their house.

“Frances Sophia.” Rose finally seems to gather herself, gesturing into the pram with no small amount of pride.

She has that smugness about her that new mothers often have, a certain feeling that they suddenly know depths of love inaccessible to others, that they are in possession of the most precious creature God ever crafted. Katherine used to bear that expression, that air, when she rested her hand on the swell of her now-flat belly.

With great effort, Katherine steps closer, peers into the pram at the sleeping baby, doing her due diligence, stepping up to pay homage. She should have known that Rose’s child would be as pretty as her mother, the same pale skin and hair like gold thread. If she wasn’t sleeping, Katherine is sure she would be able to see the same big blue eyes. Katherine wishes that Frances Sophia was uglier. It would make her easier to hate.

“She’s beautiful.” Katherine says, telling herself that she’s saying it because she’s supposed to, not because it’s true.

Rose’s face falls open in realisation. “Oh, Katherine, I –“

“No, do not apologise.” Katherine waves a hand dismissively. She doesn’t want hollow apologies. She’s hollow enough already. “She is. She is beautiful.”

“Rose, we should take Frances home. We do not want her getting sick.” Dr. Graceton coughs. _It’s not catching,_ Katherine wants to snap at him, even though he’s the one who diagnosed her, _your baby isn’t going to drop dead just from me looking at her._

“Of course.” Rose nods hurriedly, gratitude flashing behind her eyes. “Goodbye, Katherine.”

“Goodbye.” It feels like an ending, but not like a resolution.

Katherine wants to stamp her feet and scream at the sky, but it won’t do her any good. She walks home a little slower than usual. Her and Marge have talked about this, of course, at one of their many meetings over the past few weeks. The other woman has been both invaluable and welcoming. But it’s different, doing it for real. Seeing another mother pushing her perfect child around in a pram and trying not to wonder _why them? Why them and not me?_ It’s certainly not for lack of love. At first she had been worried about that, that Lucy had somehow sensed that she wasn’t wanted, wasn’t planned, but that’s nothing but superstition. Lucy wasn’t planned, but she was wanted. Jack’s regular conversations with the little one would have quickly convinced her of that. No, there’s no discernible reason and somehow that’s worse than knowing that it’s her fault. Because at least if she knew it was her fault, she could repent. She can’t repent for this. She’s just got to keep living with it. 

It’s testament to how little she wants to just keep living with it that even the sound of Jack’s voice as she closes their front door behind her can’t improve her mood.

“Hello?” He calls, from the kitchen, by the sounds of things. One would think that seeing as only two of them live in the house that he wouldn’t bother questioning the newcomer’s identity, but the Kelly household has never claimed to be normal. Now that the grief is less raw, more of a burning ache than a stabbing pain, the endless stream of newsies and former newsies and Bowery staff and neighbours has resumed in full force. It’s rare that their house will go a day without at least one or two visitors.

“Only me.” She calls back, hearing the lightness in Jack’s tone as he makes to respond.

“Me? Now, ‘s that the name o’ the pretty reporter who-” he rounds the corner through the kitchen doorway and into the hall to greet her, then sees her face and stops in his tracks, “-hey, what’s wrong?”

“I saw the Gracetons on my way home from work.” Katherine sighs, not looking at him as she toes off her shoes and sets her bag down on the hallway table. “Rose has had her baby.”

“Oh.”

Katherine screws her eyes shut. She’s been doing so well, the past week. Not breaking down. Being her usual indomitable self.

“They didn’t want anything to do with me. And they’ve got a lovely little baby girl.” And then she feels Jack’s arms around her, pulling her into his chest, feels the soft grey wool of his waistcoat against her cheek, the one she bought for him so long ago, it seems, that smells of him now, his aftershave and ink and oil paint. “I talked it through with Marge, preparing for seeing a mother with a pram. I just – it’s different when it’s real, you know?”

“Yeah, I knows.”

And he doesn’t know, he doesn’t know at all, he can’t. Because he lost his child, sure, but he didn’t have the insides of him ripped out in the losing, at least not literally. He got to hold their child, sure, but there wasn’t a string that tied him to their baby, a string that got cut, leaving only the invisible strings that bound them together, bound to a little girl who lies cold in the ground. They both know it’s different, different forms of pain entirely, though both just as painful.

“And, it was as if, I don’t know, they thought I’d make their baby sick or something. Just by looking.”

“They’s stupid.” Jack’s response is immediate in the kind of way that makes her stomach hurt, trying to digest the faith that she worries is so very misplaced.

“Are they?” She asks, even though she knows the answer.

Katherine’s never believed in curses. They’re a load of hocus-pocus, jiggery-pokery so far as she’s concerned. But sometimes she feels cursed. Not in the hook-nosed witch kind of way, but in the King Midas way, where things look nice at first, shining gold, but have the life sucked out of them completely when one looks closer.

“Yeah. You lookin’ fixes people, it don’ make ‘em sick.” His fingers, deft, artist’s fingers, brush through the strands of her hair, separating them.

“My looking has never fixed anybody.”

“Fixed me, didn’t it? As much as possible.”

“I didn’t fix you, Jack. You were never broken.”

He takes her face between his hands then, these hands that paint and fight and work, all for her, only ever for her and their family, and makes her look at him when he says:

“An’ neither is you.” They’re awash with something, those words, clean water pouring over her face, washing her clean, a jug filled in the River Pactolus.

“C’mon.” He presses a kiss to her forehead with chapped lips. “I ain’t started dinner yet; let’s go to the Bowery instead. They’s got a new show on an’ we can see Daisy an’ Medda after.”

Katherine tilts her chin up, raising an eyebrow, a challenge. She is not broken. She will not be broken. “You just want to look at the Bowery Beauties’ legs.”

Jack grins down at her, that hopeful look on his face that reminds her just how very young her husband is. Because her one little joke, for him, is a sign that things are looking up. He’s mastered hoping, it’s what’s kept him alive, on the streets. This whole thing, it’s a veritable Pandora’s box. But there’s a glimmer of hope there in the bottom, with a broken wing and ruffled feathers, but it’s there and it’s them.

“Hey, I ain’t Les. Only pair o’ legs I wanta be lookin’ at is yours, sweetheart.”

Katherine shoots him a sarcastic look. “I think that’s the greatest compliment you’ve ever given me.”

“Plenty more where that came from.” Jack tells her, smiling wickedly as he presses his tongue into the hollow of his cheek. “I can talk ‘bout your tits next ‘f you wants-“

She swats at his head for that and he barks out a laugh, haring it into the kitchen with her chasing after him, calling out something about his cheek and _how dare he_. And it hasn’t really made anything better, because there’s no way to fix this kind of brokenness, whether she looks directly at it or not. They just keep living. They keep living, and it’s _good_.


	65. Chapter 65

March rolls around as if the world has nothing better to do than change its clothes, easing from white to green, shedding its old skin.

Race leaves the lodgehouse. Jack doesn’t see him for two whole weeks, and frankly, he’s absolutely terrified. Race isn’t one who goes in for the deep conversations, not unless you catch him at three in the morning in a haze of cigar smoke, and he hadn’t brought up the fact that he was leaving, so Jack hadn’t asked. It isn’t until his presence comes to be noticeably absent from their kitchen for an entire fortnight that Jack begins to worry.

So, one Saturday, late on in March, Jack leaves Katherine tapping out a final chapter of whatever wonders she’s working with that typewriter of hers and heads through to Queens, to the only place he can assume that Race will be, now that he’s no longer selling papes: the Aqueduct Racetrack. And he hopes, desperately, desperately, that he’s wrong and that Race hasn’t been absent from their kitchen for the past two weeks for the reason that he thinks he has.

Jack sneaks in the way the newsies always used to in the heady days of lost summers, slipping between the struts that support the stands, wafting away the cobwebs that have gathered there and slipping out into the track complex. He could afford to pay a quarter for the entrance fee, but he isn’t here to watch the races. He’s here to watch out for one particular Race. Jack spots him quickly, a boy with a halo of messy golden curls, a cigar clamped between his teeth, working his way along the row of spectators, shaking their hands with betting slips surreptitiously concealed in his palm. If Jack wasn’t trying to save him, he’d absolutely kill him.

See, Race got his nickname when he kept getting a pool going in the lodgehouse and lying his way into the Aqueduct Racetrack of a Saturday afternoon to wager with the other newsboys over stakes of sandwiches. Hell, Jack’s even joined him a few times, in the summers when the air was fresh and money wasn’t so tight. He has fond memories of selling out their papes in the mornings, quick as shots, then sprinting over to Queens to sneak in beneath the stands, emerging into bright sunlight and freshly cut grass to drink lukewarm stolen beer straight from the bottles and watch the races. It’s one of the few good memories he has. But this? This is not the same thing. This isn’t teenage rebellion, but something that could wreck Race’s entire future. And Jack isn’t going to let any of his boys fuck themselves up like that.

Jack elbows his way through the crowd, forcing himself through the gaps where the middle-class bowler hats rub shoulders with the drunks sacking off from the dockyards, eyes fixed on that yellow head that bobs through the stands in front of him. When he finally catches up with him, Jack grasps hold of Race’s collar and bodily drags him through the mass of people, the sweating, squirming masses there to witness the moment of the starting gun, ignoring the boy’s writhing and wrestling until they’re outside and Jack can shove him to the ground.

“What the hell were you thinkin’?” Jack snarls as Race lands in the dusty ground outside the track.

“What the fuck, Jack?” Race staggers to his feet, rubbing at the scruff of his neck where Jack had grabbed him. “I thought you was the bulls-“

“You best be glad I ain’t.” Jack spits, hating the images such a statement conjures up. He’s run away from the bulls too many times, several of them in this very racetrack, weaving through the crowds, sweat on his brow, piercing whistles and flashes of navy blue behind him, their race as close as the one going on down on the track but with stakes infinitely higher. “Illegal gamblin’, Race, really?”

“Like you don’ break the law whenever you sees fit-“

“Whenever I needs to feed you an’ the boys, you means. Why the hell didn’t you ask for help?”

“‘Cos you ain’t some sorta saviour, Jack!” Race throws his hands in the air, laughing humourlessly, immune to the stares of the people passing by. He can’t just be throwing himself on the mercy of the only one of their band of brothers who’s managed to claw himself out of nothing. He’s supposed to be able to do this himself. He shouldn’t have to need anybody else. “Ever thought I don’ want your help? Jus’ ‘cos you believes in Jesus now don’ mean you is him.”

Jack’s jaw clenches. “I ain’t lettin’ you get thrown in prison –“

And that’s what snaps Race, after his first two weeks of hellish adulthood. Because who is Jack, now, to _let_ him do anything? If he’s expected to sort himself out like an adult, then Jack can’t put rules on him like a child.

He hits Jack before he even thinks about it, a right hook that catches Jack’s jaw and sends him staggering backwards. “Where the hell else I goin’ to end up?”

Jack doesn’t take kindly to this, launching himself at Race, the two of them scrabbling and scrapping and rolling in the dust, gathering a small, distant crowd, as if they are their very own spectator sport, some sort of demented bullfight. Jack wouldn’t be surprised if Race turns out to be part bull. He’s certainly bull-headed enough. Jack’s rusty, he hasn’t been in a fistfight since Rawlings and that was months ago, but he’s got a good six inches of height on Race, a decent amount more muscle, and the benefit of eating good food on a regular basis. Race lands a few punches, but there’s no competition, not really. Before long, Jack has the kid pinned to the ground, digging his knee into the boy’s abdomen. Just for a moment, just to make a point, Jack shifts his weight onto that knee, knocking the wind out of Race. Then he stands up, brushing the dust from his hands and his clothes. Race stays on the ground, panting. At a glare from Jack, the small crowd disperses, muttering something about drunkards.

“I got sentenced the second I ended up in the Refuge.” Race finally spits out, a trickle of blood slipping from the corner of his mouth. “I ain’t like you, there ain’t no way outta this for me.”

“Of course there’s a way out. ‘S always a way out.” Jack tells him, holding out a hand to help Race up. The boy ignores it, but Jack keeps it there, a challenge. “Come home.”

“I ain’t got a home.” Race snarls, propping himself up on one elbow and spitting a mixture of blood and saliva into the dust. “In case you’s forgotten, I ain’t allowed to stay at the lodgehouse no more.”

“Not the lodgehouse, y’idiot. Home. Wi’ me an’ Kath. We’s got a spare room, we’ll help you find a job, we’ll get it sorted. I ain’t goin’ to visit you in prison.”

Race blinks up at him, eyeing Jack’s extended hand with suspicion, but some of the vitriol is gone when he says: “I ain’t takin’ your spare room-“

“I ain’t givin’ you a choice.”

“Kath won’t want me-“

“Fuck off, Kath loves you.” Jack rolls his eyes, leaning down properly in order to yank Race to his feet. “‘Sides, y’won’t need to stay long. Once you’s got a job, a proper one, you can find your own place. ‘S jus’ a stopgap.”

Race looks at him, a long piercing look. Then, he nods, and Jack nods back, and that’s the end of it. No matter what anybody says, a brawl between newsies is pretty good at solving most things, according to Jack’s experience at least. He slings his arm around Race’s shoulders, bonier, he notes, than the last time he felt them, his shoulder blades sharp like the tips of a bird’s wings, and they start to walk back. They’re both of them a little bit battered and a little bit bloody, but such things aren’t out of the ordinary for them.

Katherine, however, is less convinced by this protest when the two of them walk in looking as if they’ve gone two rounds with a brick wall. Race, at least, has the decency to apologise, feeling suddenly uneasy in the house in a way he never has before. Before, he’s always just wandered in, unbothered by the notion that it might be an inconvenience. Now, though? He feels as though his very existence is an imposition. Jack has no such qualms, lazily grinning up at Katherine as she cleans up the scrape on his face, using rather more rubbing alcohol that is strictly necessary when he begs her, teasing, to kiss it better. She doesn’t really hold it against him, though, as she presses a quick kiss to his uninjured cheek before he takes Race upstairs.

“Woah.” Race says, as he walks into the spare room, eyes fixed on the mural that covers the entire back wall.

“Sorry.” Jack mutters, scratching at the back of his neck as he hunts around for some clean bedsheets. “Was for Lucy.”

Race is quiet for a long moment before he speaks. “She’d have liked it.”

Jack’s eyes flick up to meet his and Race stares him right back down. They share another nod, then, something like agreement, silent but very much there. Suddenly, Race doesn’t feel quite so unwelcome anymore.

The following day, Race leaves the house in search of work, planning to scour various businesses for a sniff of gainful employment. His hopes aren’t high; the only thing Race has ever been good at is lying, predominantly about newspaper headlines and betting odds, so, unless he can somehow get a gig as a politician, he doesn’t think he’s going to get very far. Still, he feels a strange sort of duty to at least try and sort himself out with some work after Jack and Kath have opened their door to him so readily.

Jack and Katherine go to church, as usual, though Marge invites Katherine back to her house for lunch, so Jack walks back from church alone. And that’s fine, he’s been alone most of his life, and he doesn’t need his wife by his side every second of every day to feel whole or anything. Except, he’d really quite like her there right about now.

Jack’s grieved enough people to know that the pain doesn’t just go away after a few weeks, despite everybody treating it as though it does. He’s been fooling himself, though, or trying to, that he’s been feeling better about the loss of Lucy. Which, today at least, isn’t true. See, between Katherine, the rest of his family, and their new church, he’s been doing okay. He’s accepted things. And he still has accepted things. He’s sad, naturally, but both he and Katherine have figured out how to give themselves permission to be happy again. Except Race and that spare room have thrown him off again, like that time that the coalman succeeded in dislodging him from the side of the train and he’d ended up sprawled on the gravel at the side of the tracks, scraped up and bleeding. That day, six-year-old Jack got up and limped home. That’s what today’s Jack does too.

And he tries to concentrate on other things, he really does, he tries to work on a commission and scrubs the front step and tidies up all of the socks that he’s left all over their bedroom floor. But he ends up back there, eventually, stood in the barren little spare bedroom, staring at the wall of jungle that rises before him, not entirely sure how he got here.

Race won’t want a wall covered in silly animals. Nobody will. It’s not like they’re ever going to have child small enough to appreciate them staying in here – even Carl and Peter are rather too old for it. And Edith, it must embarrass her. It embarrasses him. He wonders if it was tempting fate, to paint something so soon, something so wild. Jack wonders if being lost in the jungle could even compare to being as lost as he feels right now. So, he goes and finds the white paint. It’ll take a few coats to cover it up. It’ll do him good. It’ll put things to rest. It will.

He’s just got the lid off the tin of paint when he hears Katherine return home. Jack dips the brush in the paint, watching the way that it disturbs the perfect surface, then swipes it across wall. It erases the monkey’s eyes, a blindfold of white cloth, or that’s what it would look like if the paint didn’t start to drip down the wall, teardrops rolling down the tree trunks. The leaves are the same green as the booties that Katherine was knitting, the one that was buried with Lucy, the one that is pinned inside the front cover of Katherine’s bible. And, somehow, it’s the green that breaks him.

 _Men don’t cry_ , his father used to say, but Jack does, because she’s gone. And he knows that they’re okay, knows that they can adopt, knows that he has his family, knows that he has Katherine, that he always has Katherine, he _knows;_ but it hurts and the knowing doesn’t stop the hurting. He hurls the paintbrush at the wall, white splattering across the jungle, fists his hands in his hair. He might scream, he might not – then decides that he has when Katherine appears in the doorway, a horrified expression on her face and he can’t deal with that, he can’t deal with that at all.

She steps towards him, arms outstretched, but he throws up a hand, a warning, _stay back_. He can’t deal with somebody touching him right now, not even Katherine. She stops, lowers her arms. Jack swallows, screwing his eyes shut. _Run,_ his brain keeps telling him, _just run. Get out of here._ But he presses his heels into the floor and stands his ground, though he squeezes his eyes shut so hard that it hurts. Jack presses his fingers against the warm metal of his wedding ring, trying to bring himself back to earth.

 _Do you think that you could try to tell me that next time, before you walk away?_ That’s what she’d asked him to do. He can do that. He can do most anything for Katherine.

“I’s goin’ out. I ain’t leavin’. I jus’… need a breather.”

“Okay.” Katherine says, nodding tightly and stepping out of his path.

So, he goes out and Katherine tells herself that he isn’t leaving. Somehow, Jack’s assurance isn’t very comforting. She turns to the wall and sighs at what she sees, at the erasure there. But it won’t do any good, this being still. So, she fits the lid back onto the tin of paint and cleans off the paintbrush the way she’s watched her husband do a thousand times. Under the stairs, in their little store cupboard which is filled with the canvases that Jack hasn’t got propped up against the walls to dry and the books that don’t fit on the bookshelves that Katherine has situated in almost every room, she finds the little pot of lacquer thinner. She takes it up to the spare room and she waits. She waits a long time, it seems, before Jack returns, but he does return, like he promised her he would. And she realises, when he appears in the doorway scratching at the back of his neck with bags under his eyes like bruises, that she never for a moment doubted that he’d come back to her.

“Lucy?” She asks, knowing the answer already, and he just nods. She nods back. “Come on. We need this painting. For when we adopt.”

Jack frowns at her as she holds out a cloth to him, but he takes it anyway and follows her lead, dipping his cloth in the lacquer thinner as she does with hers, beginning to gently remove the flaky white paint from over the mural. It takes them almost an hour as the work is both delicate and hard, fingers aching and backs cramping. They don’t speak, not even a word, until they’re done. But when they are, when the mural is back as bright as it ever was, Jack sits with his back against the opposite wall and pulls her down beside him, tugging her into his embrace. They’re silent for a long moment, basking in the togetherness, the forgiveness, that is painted in the late afternoon sunlight that filters through the little window, illuminating the dust like so many fireflies.

“Can people who ain’t babies get baptized?” Jack asks, gazing up at the wall.

“Well, of course they can. Lots of people do.” Katherine replies, tearing her eyes from the mural and pulling away from him just slightly to look at him. “Why?”

Jack swallows, a heavy thing that lingers in his throat. “I think I’d like to. Not in front o’ everybody, like. Jus’… quiet.”

That is… not what she was expecting. Sure, she’s known that Jack listens in church in a way that he never used to, spotted the little prayers in messy, backwards handwriting that have replaced his signature in the corners of the drawings in his personal sketchbook. But this? Her instant reaction, honestly, is that he can’t. He can’t even read the Bible, for goodness sake. But Katherine pushes that away. Jack wouldn’t raise something like this, she knows, if it hadn’t been preying on his mind for a good long while. He’s serious about this. Just because his faith is quieter than hers doesn’t make it any less real.

Katherine knows better than to try and make a big deal of get, to congratulate him on finding faith or something like that. There’s too much honesty and openness about his features for that. It fills her chest with a fizzing feeling, though, that he’s come back to her, that he’s trusting her with this. So, she fights down squeals and nods, slowly.

“Why don’t we talk to the reverend about it next Sunday? I can help you get the conversation started.”

“That sounds good, yeah.”

“Good.”

And it is good. It is so very, very good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Race is working at the Aqueduct Racetrack, which was built in 1894. Gambling was entirely illegal and though it was widespread in New York, there was a crackdown on it in the late 1890s and early 1900s. Comments make me very happy :)


	66. Chapter 66

“Ain’t the fact that I’s here ‘nough evidence that I’s been born?” Jack grouches, squeezing her hand in his as they wander home from church. Katherine resists the urge to roll her eyes.

“They need to make sure you weren’t baptised in another parish, Jack. It’ll take an hour to go and get the birth certificate, at the most.”

He scrunches his nose in response, but Katherine knows that it’s less about his birth certificate and more about how public the baptism needs to be. It’s not that Jack’s embarrassed, hell, he wouldn’t be doing this if he was. It’s just that he doesn’t know everything and what if people don’t think he’s good enough for it? It’s not like he can quote scripture at them to tell them to stop being snobs, though, to be fair, Katherine probably would do so on his behalf. But, as Katherine and the reverend have both impressed on him (and, he’s sure, will continue to do so until he’s convinced), faith isn’t about having all of the answers. So, he’s given in. Baptism in front of the congregation it is. They’ve promised him that he won’t have to take his shirt off to get in the water; that it’s not like taking a bath like he thought it might be, so it’s fine. Such worries were of great amusement to Katherine, who teased him about stripping off in front of their church family, but Jack’s too relieved to care. Nobody is going to see his scars – for all he cares, they can baptise him in Snyder’s fucking boathouse, just so long as nobody sees his scars.

“I still think ‘s stupid.” He says, but Katherine can tell there’s less annoyance behind the words than there is amusement leftover from the conversation with the reverend.

“You’re being stupid.”

“I’s crushed!” He laughs, yanking off his cap and clutching it to his heart as he staggers away from her on the pavement.

Katherine observes this performance with cool amusement. “I’m sure you’ll survive the heartbreak.”

Jack chuckles, tugging his cap back on and returning to her side, taking hold of her hand again and bringing it up to his lips to press a kiss to her knuckles. “Y’broke my heart, y’know, that first day I metcha.”

“Liar.” Katherine says, smiling even as she flushes, thinking back to her less than warm reception of Jack’s initial advances. Her prediction that he would get nothing for his troubles has turned out to be the most inaccurate headline she’s ever written. “You didn’t even know me.”

“Love at first sight, Ace, what can I say?” Jack grins, spinning around to walk backwards along the pavement, facing her. She laughs.

“Love at first sight is a fairy tale.”

“An’ yet here I is,” Jack spreads his arms wide, his smile brighter and warmer than the spring sunshine, “your Prince Charmin’.”

“Charming is one word for you.” Katherine arches a brow. “I can think of others.”

Jack throws her a wink. “I betcha can.”

She shakes her head at him, pulling him back into step beside her and snatching his cap from his head in punishment. He makes a playful grab for it, but Katherine twists it out of his reach, holding it aloft and challenging him.

“When _did_ you fall in love with me?” She teases. Jack frowns, stroking an imaginary beard as he pretends to think.

“I think it was when y’told me to shuddup. On the rooftop, y’know. I’s always had a thing for bossy girls.”

“I am not bossy!” Katherine cries, whacking him with his cap. Jack laughs, taking the opportunity to retrieve his hat and tuck it back securely onto his head.

“Y’are, sweetheart.” He grins, leaning in and planting a kiss on her cheek. “But I like it. You ain’t afraid to stand up for what you believe in.”

And, well, maybe he wasn’t _entirely_ wrong about the charming thing. How he’s managed to convince her that him calling her bossy is a compliment, she will never know, but she can’t help but bless him with a smile, taking his hand once again and then reaching over to straighten his collar. The action is just the tiniest bit possessive, given that there is a gaggle of women on the opposite side of the street who are blatantly staring at them. Though Katherine is ninety-nine percent sure it’s because of their impropriety, Jack definitely draws female attention. She just wants to make sure they know whose husband he is, that’s all.

Jack, for his part, seems completely oblivious to the other women, instead entirely enchanted by the way that Katherine is looking up at him, affectionate and warm from under her eyelashes, and the way that she says: “And what if I believe in you, hm?”

Jack laughs, shaking his head. Then, a little quieter, not quite meeting her eyes, he asks: “What ‘bout you?” It takes Katherine a moment to catch his meaning, but once she does, her response is instant.

“Just after the strike ended. You’d been so brave, you’d done everything right, and you had everything you ever wanted spread out in front of you. You could have hopped a train to Santa Fe right then and there. But you didn’t. You stayed. For your family.”

“Well,” Jack shrugs, red-faced at the praise, “family’s the most important thing.”

Katherine can’t help but agree, though it becomes substantially harder to cling to that belief that afternoon when Constance (an expected visitor) and her father (an unexpected one) turn up on their doorstep. After ushering Constance inside, sending her through to the kitchen where Jack is getting set up for their promised baking session, she turns back to the man on the doorstep.

“Father?” She raises an eyebrow. He coughs.

“I have, ahem, some time off today. I wondered if I might join you a while?”

Katherine bristles. Of course, _of course,_ he isn’t just going to let Constance have a nice time with them, because they’re ‘poor’ now, because Jack, in her father’s eyes, is still no more than a street urchin, because they definitely need a chaperone to ensure that they don’t corrupt the twelve-year-old. She purses her lips, biting back several choice phrases, and reminds herself of the sermon Reverend Byrne gave that morning on how they all must attempt to see Christ in others. It’s rather difficult at this exact moment, but still she stands aside.

“Come in.”

They make their way into the kitchen, which is already cramped due to four bodies being squashed into it before they arrived.

“Who are these people?” Pulitzer asks, leaning close to Katherine’s ear. There’s an undercurrent of derision in his tone that makes her blood boil.

“Esther Jacobs and Race.” She says firmly. “They’re family.”

Race is, predictably, sitting at the kitchen table with his feet up on a chair, frowning down at a job advertisement that Katherine found in a paper two days prior.

“Thanks, Mrs-“ Jack catches himself, coughs, corrects, “-Esther. Thank you.”

The smile that spreads across Esther Jacobs’ face erases the lines of worry and care that have formed on her forehead, taking her a good ten years back into youthfulness.

“Don’t be silly. I always love to see you and, really, I should be the one thanking you. There’s no chance David would ever have ended up with Miriam if it wasn’t for your influence.”

“Nah, he would.” Jack grins. “It jus’ mighta taken him a decade.”

“And I can’t wait that long for grandchildren.” Esther says, decisive.

Katherine feels like dying. She knows, of course, that Esther spoke without thinking. It’s innocuous enough, after all. But that doesn’t erase the pain, a cavity within her. Jack’s eyes flick over to her even as Esther continues. He _knows._

“My biscuit recipe is a fair trade. I must be getting off – but the two of you will come for dinner soon, won’t you? Les misses you terribly.”

“Wi’ your cookin’? Couldn’t keep us away for the world.”

Jack smiles down at Esther and even manages not to flinch as she hugs him, before escorting her to the door. As he passes, he reaches out and gives Katherine’s hand a quick, meaningful squeeze. She’s been with Jack long enough now to know the meaning of each little touch, learned to speak his language of tactility. _It’s okay,_ he says, _I know it hurts. But we are okay and we are whole._ Suddenly Katherine doesn’t feel so empty anymore.

She leads her Father to a chair, making sure his afflicted eyes don’t cause him to misjudge the distance and crumple to the ground, as Constance takes it upon herself to introduce herself to Race. Constance, still technically forbidden from attending parties and formal dinners, at least without supervision, hasn’t yet learned the proper forms of introduction within society. But, then again, neither has Race, so it isn’t really, Katherine decides, of very much import.

And then Jack is back, clapping his hands together and lassoing Constance with an apron to keep her frock, likely worth more than the entirety of their kitchen, clean of flour.

It’s honestly nicer than Katherine expects. She helps Constance roll out the dough, standing beside her until her movements are more confident, before Jack helps her with the biscuit cutter, explaining why she needs to try and cut from the sides inwards, otherwise she’s wasting dough by taking it straight from the middle. The girl isn’t a natural by any means, but she picks it up faster than Katherine did, frankly, and so the two of them are taking that as a win. Race steals a bit of raw biscuit dough as he heads out, clapping Jack on the shoulder and glaring at Joseph. It takes Race’s glare for Katherine to remember her silent father’s presence.

“Here.” She hands him a biscuit cutter. “You should have a go, Father.”

“I –“ Pulitzer coughs, frowning, “I cannot see well enough to-“

“I’ll help!” Constance beams, shuffling the entire operation across the table and taking her father’s hands in her own, guiding them to where they need to press down, just as Jack’s had done on hers a few minutes before.

There’s a quiet beauty in press of dainty pink fingers on wrinkled ones, the way in which the flour coats them both the same. That will be them, Katherine thinks, one day, perhaps. Her and Jack, with their adopted children guiding their movements. Perhaps life is not so entirely desperate as she had thought in the January cold of the cemetery.

By the time Constance and her father finally leave, though, she’s more than had enough. This rediscovery of family is stilted and draining in the time that surrounds those little blissful moments and she’s inclined to think it will be a while before she manages to deal with them for an extended length of time.

Katherine shuts the door behind them and heaves out a sigh, resting her forehead against the cool wood of the door. Closing her eyes, she thinks back to the conversation that she had with Marge a few days prior, sat in the woman’s little sitting room with the chintz curtains and blue patterned teacups.

_“May I ask something of a… delicate nature?”_

_“There are no judgements here, you know that.”_

_“I’m worried that Jack doesn’t… that he doesn’t want me anymore.”_

_“Emotionally? Practically? Sexually?”_

_“The first two I know that he does, but…”_

_“You think he doesn’t want to have sex with you anymore?”_

_“I’m worried that he doesn’t. He’s still fine with everything else, but he always used to be the one to… instigate things.”_

_“Has it occurred to you that he might be trying to be respectful? That he doesn’t want to hurt you and is waiting for indication from you?”_

_“That **does** sound like something he would do.”_

_“Most problems in marriage can be solved by talking. Try initiating something, share your fears with him. You’ll work it out, the poor boy is head over heels in love with you. Besides, he’s what, twenty? I really don’t think you have anything to worry about in terms of him desiring you.”_

So, Katherine isn’t quite ready to initiate something yet. It’s not that she doesn’t want to – she does, and it certainly helped that Marge was so frank about it. She just doesn’t know if Jack does. It’s taken _her_ until now to get used to the idea that maybe her body isn’t a disgusting failure that caused the death of their child. What if Jack never gets used to that idea? She shakes her head. That is decidedly not today’s problem.

If, however, most problems in marriage can be solved by talking, then this will probably make an excellent practice run. Katherine, after all, should not be this nervous about this conversation. It’s frankly ridiculous, because she does not need her husband’s permission to do anything, thank you very much. She’s going to do whatever she wants no matter what he says. Well, she isn’t _going_ to, but she _could_. She’s pretty sure that if Elise and Margot from the suffrage magazine could see her now, they would be screaming at her not to play into her husband’s controlling systems of power. Except, this is a decision that will affect Jack, so he does deserve to know. And also (and this, at the end of the day, is the major reason behind it all), she can’t really imagine making any sort of important decision or step without him by her side. But she still shouldn’t be this nervous, because Jack _will_ be fine with it. He’s never been anything less than supportive, even when she had to travel to Texas and goodness knows that nearly tore them both to pieces.

So, she steps into the kitchen and just comes right out and says it.

“I want to quit my job.”

Jack whips around, caught with his hand in the biscuit tin. He shoots her a guilty grin, replacing the lid and chewing over a bite before he replies.

“As in, you hate your editor but you’s goin’ back in all guns blazin’ tomorrow kinda _I wanta quit my job,_ or as in an actual handin’ in your resignation kinda _I wanta quit my job_?”

“Actually, handing in my resignation, I want to quit my job.” Katherine confirms.

“Can I ask why?”

“Part of it is I hate my editor. Part of it is that it isn’t what I want to do anymore. I want to write a book. I’ve spoken to a few publishers, given them my manuscript, and one of them wants to publish it. They want it to come out by July, though, so it’d be much easier if it was the only thing I was working on.”

Jack just blinks at her for a moment and Katherine winces. She definitely should have told him before. First the miscarriage, now this – he’s going to hate her, she’s an awful wife, he-

“This has been brewin’ for a while, hasn’t it?” Jack asks, slowly, taking another bite of his biscuit.

“Yes.” Katherine doesn’t look at him, she can’t, instead tracing patterns on the tiles of their kitchen floor with stocking feet.

“An’ you didn’ tell me ‘cos…”

“I didn’t want to suggest it and have you worrying about finances if it wouldn’t be feasible.” _And I also didn’t want you to see me fail at this as well if it didn’t work out._

“Okay.”

Katherine looks up at him so quickly she almost gets whiplash. He’s just leaning against the kitchen sideboard, cool as anything, and he’s just agreed.

“Okay?” She furrows her brow.

“We can manage jus’ fine on my salary, Kath.” Jack shrugs. “‘F this is gonna make you happy, then I wants you to do it.”

Katherine nods slowly. “Okay.”

A smirk starts playing at the corner of Jack’s mouth. All too quickly, he looks every bit the cheeky boy he was the day she first met him. And whilst it’s wonderful, whilst she relishes that he’s never lost his spark, not even through all of this, it makes her realise the kind of man that he’s grown into. And she’s so, so grateful for everything that he is.

“Was you expectin’ me to start throwin’ things or somethin’?”

“No, I just… wasn’t expecting you to be so nonchalant.”

Jack scrunches his nose, shoving the last mouthful of biscuit in. “Noncha-hoo-ha?”

“Relaxed about it.” She fills in. She’s proud to say that she has to do that less and less these days – he even used the word _doxology_ in a sentence, correctly too, the other day.

“Kath, you ain’t been happy for months.” Jack sighs, strolling over and cupping her cheek. Even after all this time, the brush of his calloused fingers trail sparks across her skin. “Work’s been tough on you after-“

“It has.” She interrupts. Katherine loves him, she loves him so much, and she tries to tell him that with her eyes. She loves him, but she can’t deal with that event being spoken of aloud today.

“Yeah.” Jack nods. “So, we’s gonna manage. Go hand in your resignation tomorrow.”

With that, he drops a kiss on her forehead and makes to head out of the kitchen. Katherine spins on her heel in shock.

“Tomorrow?”

Jack turns in the doorway, a smile on his lips, eyebrows raised. “Don’t tell me you ain’t already got it typed up.”

“You know me too well.”

They don’t speak about the book, not at all. Not when Katherine gets the contract for it through the post or when the first draft comes back covered in red pen. It’s always been something private, the only thing other than Jack that she could cling to in the aftermath of Lucy. And Katherine knows that Jack would listen, if she did talk about it. She knows that she could bring it up over breakfast one morning, or in the evening when she’s scribbling notes and he’s sketching out something or other. But it isn’t right. Jack has his own ways of grieving, and for the most part they’re quiet and wrapped up in himself. Sometimes he doesn’t even acknowledge it, just flashing that charming grin, the same one he’d worn the very first day she met him, which feels like a lifetime ago, not less than two years. And sometimes he turns his face into her shoulder, or rips up a drawing, or paints through the night until his eyes are red and swollen and she has to drag him into bed with her if she wants him to sleep at all.

They muddle through. It’s what they’ve always done. So long as they’re together. Some days she can barely get out of bed, the pain of it sitting on her chest and pressing her into the mattress, keeping her from breathing. And sometimes she wakes up and Jack is breathing too fast, gulping in breaths like a drowning man, with wild haunted eyes. But they’re together. He makes her coffee and helps her out of bed. She rubs his back and whispers nonsense words to him until his heart starts beating at a rate something close to normal. And they’re okay, and sometimes they’re not, and that’s okay too. They have each other.


	67. Chapter 67

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are two parts of this chapter and the second one (below the ellipsis) gets a little bit sexy. Nothing explicit, but similar to the couple of chapters after the wedding, if you catch my drift. Basically, it’s in here because Jack and Katherine have some major crap they need to work out regarding intimacy post-miscarriage. So it’s important to their story, but feel free to skip the latter half if you’re not into that. 
> 
> Also, if you’re still reading, please do comment! I love to hear from you :)

Jack never thought the city hall would be so quiet. He expected it to be grand, of course, no doubt about that, had done from the minute they walked up to it in the bright May sunshine, and he certainly hadn’t been disappointed, what with the enormous sweeping staircase and mountains of marble. But he hadn’t expected the quiet. There’s a sort of hush that falls over the halls here, broken only by the quiet tapping of footsteps down one distant corridor or another.

They sit on chairs against the wall of the circular mezzanine, the two of them, Katherine on his right, her hand resting on his knee to keep it from bouncing as he stares down at the large brown envelope in his hands. He’s seen one before, naturally, Katherine had brought him an identical one the last time she came here in search of his birth certificate, but that particular copy had burned up along with the rest of the contents of the Pulitzer mansion.

The envelope is the expensive kind; _and so it ought to be,_ he thinks, _given what they charged us to get it._ Inside, he knows, will be a birth certificate written on heavy, expensive paper. Him, reduced to a single sheet. The brown envelope has turned darker where his hands are holding it, growing damp with sweat. He feels a little bit sick. He wonders if he would have to pay for a new floor if he was to be sick on it. He doesn’t think they can afford to replace the city hall floor.

“You don’t have to look at it, you know.” Katherine tells him, squeezing his knee lightly.

He doesn’t look at her. “I know.”

“Because it doesn’t matter. Your parents don’t define you, Jack. You’ve got a proper family now – me and the newsies and Medda and the Jacobs. You don’t need this. It was stupid of me to think that you did when I got it for you two years ago.”

“I know. But I wanta know. Put it to rest, like.” He nods. It takes him saying it out loud for him to believe it himself, honestly. Then he glances over at her, suddenly and inexplicably nervous. “‘S that okay?”

“Of course.” Katherine smiles, reaching up and brushing his dark curls off his forehead. “I just want you to be happy.”

Jack nods again and returns his gaze to the envelope. The clerk hasn’t bothered to seal it. The flap is open, quivering a little in the light breeze that is stealing in through the open window at the end of the hall. It waves to him. With trembling fingers, Jack accepts the greeting, producing a birth certificate written on textured, creamy paper from inside the envelope. He squints at it, trying to piece together the information on it.

“Florence Kelly, nee Walsh. Born eighteen-fifty-“ Jack breaks off, tilting the paper towards Katherine and tapping at the mother’s birthdate section, “-is that a six or a nine?”

“A six.”

Jack nods and continues. “Born eighteen-fifty-six. Died eighteen-eighty.”

When Jack doesn’t say anything, Katherine strokes his hair back again. “Florence is a really nice name. Pretty.”

“I wish…” Jack bites his lip, staring at the paper before him, “…I wish I’d had chance to know what she was like, y’know? Like, maybe she was nicer than my old man. And I don’ s’pose I’ll ever get to. She ain’t the type o’ person who goes to heaven, by all accounts.” He swallows heavily. “Then again, maybe I won’t neither.”

“Don’t say such things.” Katherine frowns, dropping to crouch in front of him, looking up into his face. “You are going to heaven, Jack Kelly, because you’re getting baptized in a couple of weeks and I am so proud of you for finding your faith. I’ll drag you to heaven myself if I have to.”

“And my mom?” Jack blinks.

“Who knows?” Katherine sighs, wishing she could give him more comfort than this, and reaches out to squeeze his hand. “But our God is not a vindictive one.”

…

See, this had seemed like a good idea, when she first came up with it, in answer to the whole initiating something thing that she’s discussed with Marge.

 _Try initiating something._ She’s done this before. Jack used to hardly be able to keep his hands off her. She can manage this again. Right? The problem is, when that was the case, she felt important, alluring. Right at this moment, Katherine has never felt less alluring in all of her life. Her stomach has gone back to how it was before now, a loss she both mourns and sings her gratitude for in equal measure, but stretch marks remain, pale lines threading their way across her skin, cobwebs. Her stitches have healed, though she remains nervous to try this again. But it will be worth it, right? Because Jack will enjoy it. Hopefully. Her body isn’t broken because she had a miscarriage. Jack still loves her and thinks that she’s beautiful; he tells her so every day before he leaves for a work, dropping a kiss on her lips as he does so, never forgetting to even when he’s rushing, even when Race, back before he got his new job and his new place, ribbed him endlessly for it. This will be fine. She rubs her thumb across the band of her wedding ring as if to prove it to herself.

If nothing else, at least, he will have to be pleased with dinner. He was planning on making it tonight, but he’s been working a bit of overtime recently, Ernest having been on holiday, and he’ll be tired after a long day at work. Sure, Katherine’s tired too after going over editorial draft after editorial draft, but working from home is different, somehow. And she’s even managed not to burn it. (Admittedly, she has had three practice goes in Esther Jacobs’ kitchen, but she is still counting this as a roaring success.) There’s a lot of different things that she’s managed not to burn, as well, all spread out on the table. Gammon, a proper cut of it, not the cheap stuff they normally get, and roast potatoes, and green beans and broccoli. She’s even managed to procure some sliced pineapple for the occasion.

In short, she’s somewhere between smug and scared out of her wits when she hears Jack come through the front door. _Try initiating something._ Right.

“Mm, hello.” Jack certainly _sounds_ gratified when she rushes out into the hall and kisses him with as much gusto as she can muster.

“Hello.” She smiles, breaking away from him as his work bag hits the floor with a hollow thump.

She reaches out and twists the lock closed on the front door, then bolts it. Katherine loves their enormous family, she swears, but if tonight is going to work then she needs no interruptions. When she looks back at Jack, he has raised a confused eyebrow. Still smiling (because if she doesn’t she might just burst into tears and she has a hunch that might ruin the mood a little – call it reporter’s instinct), Katherine grabs his hand and pulls him toward the kitchen.

“I have a surprise for you. It’s partly as a thank you-“

“For what?”

“For being you, you idiot – and partly because I just want to spend time with you.”

They go through into the kitchen and Jack whistles low under his breath. “Woah.”

“Good woah?” She looks up at him. Katherine knows the answer, of course, but she wants to hear him say it.

“Amazin’ woah.” He nods, turning and smiling down at her. “It smells fantastic. Who made it?”

“I did, you cheeky sod.” She gives him a playful shove, but he just catches hold of her waist and draws her into his side, pressing a kiss to the top of her head.

“Seriously though, thanks, Ace. ‘S great.”

Dinner goes better than she planned. He asks about her writing for the suffrage magazine, steering clear of prying for any details regarding her novel. It’s not that she doesn’t want to share it with him – she does, more than anything – but she just wants it to be perfect before she does. She asks him about work and he tells some amusing story about Walter’s children and a particularly irate donkey that the family had apparently encountered over the weekend. He even compliments dinner, saying that it’s the best meal he’s ever eaten. Honestly, Katherine doesn’t care if he’s just saying that to make her happy, because it’s _working_.

“We’re fine, aren’t we?” She asks as Jack leans back in his chair, his plate scraped clean. Katherine is pretty sure he’d have licked it if he didn’t know she’d tell him off for it, which gives her all sorts of smug feelings.

The words come out before she really thinks them through, but those smug feelings haven’t quite managed to erase the horrible tension in the muscles of her stomach, as if she’s been running for too long, and her body seems to think that asking this question would be a fantastic way to get rid of it.

“O’ course.” Jack blinks at her, worry in his eyes. He’s no longer leaning back in his chair, instead leaning forward, covering her hand with his own across the table. “What you talkin’ ‘bout?”

“I mean-” She falters. What does she mean? “Would you change anything about us? If you could do it over again?”

“No, no question.” Jack shakes his head and the immediacy of the negative answer is just what her stomach apparently needed, because the tension flows right out of her. He squeezes her hand. “Don’ matter what happens, ‘s you an’ me. We’s got through this together, Kath. We can get through anythin’.”

Her husband isn’t one for big speeches. Jack’s always said that he used all of his up during the strike. This, though, seems to come from somewhere deep down inside of him that he was only before aware of in his subconscious, because around three seconds after he’s finished speaking he pulls his hand back off the table and scratches at the back of his neck. 

“You’d better say you wouldn’t change nothin’ too, else I’s goin’ to sound a right idiot.” He mumbles to the floor, half laughing.

“Of course I wouldn’t.” Katherine replies, getting up from her seat and reaching across the table to pull his hand away from his neck and back to hold hers. “I love you. I’m always going to love you.”

Jack looks at her, then at their entwined hands. “Bloody hell, c’mere.”

She doesn’t need telling twice, going around the table and letting him pull her into his lap, his arms, his embrace. He doesn’t kiss her, not yet, but pulls her into this fierce hug just like the one they shared that night on the rooftop. From right here, everything suddenly seems much less scary to Katherine.

Eventually, they break away, Jack telling her: “Go pick a book, I’ll do the washin’ up.”

So, Katherine steals upstairs. This is part two of the plan, the hard part. And considering the lengths Katherine’s had to go to in order to ensure that their dinner wasn’t burned, it really is hard.

She considers her options. She still has the chemise she wore on their wedding night. The lace got a little roughed about, but it’s still wearable. But she isn’t a virgin anymore, and the tiny bloodstain on it doesn’t remind her of a joining anymore, but a parting. In the end, she puts on one of his shirts. Jack definitely has a thing about it and she wears them around the house generally often enough, just because they’re comfortable. Either he’ll find it alluring, or, when he’s (more likely) repulsed by her, she can just pretend that she’s wearing it purely for comfort. She grabs a book and it’s only as she goes back downstairs that she realises what she’s picked up. _The Count of Monte Cristo_. Her French language edition. Well, at least that’s extra incentive to make sure they end tonight rather differently than by reading. She really, really doesn’t want to have to translate it for Jack as she reads, especially since the last time she spoke French was three years ago at finishing school with the loathsome Miss Bussiere.

When she walks back into the kitchen, Jack is elbow-deep in soapy water at the sink, whistling a low tune under his breath, his back to her. That gives her a little respite at least, before he looks at her. She wanders over, sliding her arms around his middle and pressing a kiss to his shoulder.

“I’s comin’, I’s comin’, I’s been busy.” He chuckles, reaching for a tea towel to dry his hands. She just hums, unsure what to say as she disentangles herself from him and takes a step back, allowing him to turn around. The very minute he does, a low groan escapes from his throat, his eyes roving up and down her form before he tilts his head back to look at the ceiling. “Ace, _angel._ ” He breathes.

Katherine isn’t entirely sure what that reaction means and, as a result, is left with absolutely no idea how to play this. “Surprise?”

“Yeah,” Jack coughs out a laugh, rolling his shoulders and looking anywhere but at her, his hand coming up to scratch at the back of his neck, “y’could call it that.”

She’s made him uncomfortable. He doesn’t want her. Katherine wants to cry with the humiliation of it all. Why had she ever thought he would? Who wants to lie with a woman whose womb can’t even produce a child? She’s about to turn and run, really, she is, but her eyes light on her husband again, despairing as she sees him shifting uncomfortably, and then realises exactly what it is that is causing his discomfort. Yes, that is a definite bulge in his trousers. Katherine has been married long enough to know what that means. She doesn’t know why he’s holding back, but it’s clearly not a lack of arousal, so she steps forward and yanks his lips down to her own.

And, bless him, Jack sure knows how to take initiative, catching her up and turning around to set her on the kitchen sideboard, stepping in between her spread legs, never breaking their kiss. Katherine, however, does. She needs to, to breathe. And then she promptly bursts into tears.

Jack’s expression immediately turns from one of pure lust to complete terror. “Kath? What did I do? Where does it hurt?”

“I’m not hurt, I just, I don’t know how to do this anymore.” She sobs, pulling him close, burying her face in his shoulder so that she doesn’t have to look at him, so that she can muffle her words. “I just want you to want me again.”

“What?”

Jack isn’t stupid. Why is he torturing her like this? He doesn’t need her to spell this out for him. “Don’t make me say it.”

“Katherine, I don’ understand.” He steps away from her. She tastes the rejection of that on her tongue even as he hooks two fingers under her chin and lifts her head to look him in the eye. “Help me understand.”

 _Come on, Katherine, you’re a big girl, you can say it._ “I want to have sex with you again.”

“Okay…” Jack blinks, his eyes intense, searching.

 _Hell._ Katherine squeezes her eyes shut. “And you don’t.”

And then, the absolute bastard, he _laughs_. “Where on earth didja get that idea from?”

“You!” Katherine’s eyes snap open. “You haven’t tried anything for months, not since –“

“Because you was goin’ on ‘bout how you felt dirty an’ didn’t understand how I could stand to touch you!” Jack cries, gesticulating wildly with that stupid grin still plastered on his face, like he’s uncovered some buried treasure. “An’ then, I dunno what it feels like, I didn’t wanta hurt you!”

“Wait.” Katherine holds up a hand. “You wanted to?”

“Whaddaya think?” Jack laughs, disbelieving. “I’s twenty, I loves you, an’ you look like…” he pauses, eyes drinking her in, lips swollen, in his shirt, on their kitchen counter, “…well, you.” He brings his eyes back up to her face, shaking his head. “We’s idiots, ain’t we?”

Katherine nods eagerly, pulling him back towards her to mumble her response against his lips. “Complete and utter.”

It takes them a couple of tries to get things right. It’s not amazing and it hurts a bit – more than Katherine lets Jack know. But she’s _missed_ this. Her and Jack have weathered this storm together, and she knows that the wind isn’t going to drop anytime soon, but there’s something about having him here, inside her, around her, a shelter of his body, that makes it somehow easier to bear. The closeness of it, of him. She falls asleep cradled against him, no barriers between them.

When she wakes up, Jack is already awake, something that’s quite unusual as of late, what with how hard he’s been working and everything that’s been going on. But he is awake, coaxing her out of slumber to join him with feathery kisses along the contours of her, her cheekbone and her jaw and her collarbone.

“I should have known it wouldn’t take you long to get back on track.” She laughs, tucking her face into his shoulder to escape the rasp of his unshaven cheek on her skin.

“Can y’blame me?” He murmurs against her shoulder and his _voice_ , the vibrations of it run through her, making her toes curl. “Lord, Ace, I could lie abed an’ do nothin’ but draw you all day. I’s married to the most perfect woman in New York.”

“That’s funny.” She hums, running her hands over the broad, muscled expanse of his back and up to tangle in his hair, tugging on the dark curls just a little in the way that makes him melt into her. Oh no, she hasn’t lost it. “I’m married to the most wonderful man in the world.”

“Oh really?” Jack groans into her neck, grazing his hands down her sides and marvelling at her, that she’s here, that she’s his. “What’s his name?”

“Strange.” She teases, a playful smile on her lips. “I think I’ve rather forgotten.”

“Hm. I think I can help you remember.” Jack mumbles, mouthing at her neck.

Katherine tilts her head to the side, giving him better access – something that he takes full advantage of. “Why the hell did we wait so long to do this?”

“No idea. It won’t happen again, I promise.” Jack replies emphatically as he slides down her body, before propping his chin on her hipbone, eyes flicking up to meet hers. “You ain’t hurtin’?”

“I’ll hurt _you_ if you don’t get on with it.”

Jack grins up at her. Then he gets on with it.


	68. Chapter 68

“Do you feel different?” Katherine asks, her forehead wrinkling in that way that it does when she’s curious.

Jack has learned these things, now, the little quirks of her, expressions and mannerisms, and finds them all rather unfairly adorable, yet keeps on drinking them down like good wine. He wants them, craves them. He wants to know her inside and out, be able to etch every part of her into his brain until he can conjure up her exact likeness in charcoal on paper whether she’s stood in front of him or not.

“Not really.” He frowns, casting a glance back at the church. “D’you think I should?”

“Baptism is only symbolic; it doesn’t transform your faith. You don’t have to feel different.” Katherine tells him, squeezing his hand. The very last thing that she wants is him getting nervous now, after he’s done something so important for the both of them. She’s so ridiculously proud of him.

It had been a big deal for him, she knows, getting up in front of all those people and saying he believed, even though he’d negotiated not having to make a big speech about his testimony. Despite the lack of speech, Jack’s pretty sure the last time people congratulated him that much was during the strike, so Katherine suspects that might have something to do with how positive he seems about everything now.

“I feel wet, ‘s for sure.” Jack wrinkles his nose, reaching up to run the fingers of his free hand through his damp curls.

Katherine holds back a laugh. She’s getting used to this, having to remind herself that Jack’s quiet, initially tentative faith is just as important as hers. And as much as he puts up his big confident front, cracking jokes and such, she has the privilege of hearing him mumbling his prayers under his breath every night, sometimes catching her own name, sometimes Lucy’s. Some things don’t need to be said aloud to make them true; love and faith are sometimes shown in other ways. Mumbled prayers, gentle touches, immersion in water. So, she doesn’t need to say aloud how proud she is, the way she told him this morning whilst he fidgeted at the breakfast table, it’s all there in the way she smiles up at him as she says:

“You look very handsome with wet hair. It’s the only time it stays where it’s supposed to rather than sticking up all over the place.” He nudges her with his shoulder for that, muttering about her cheek, but his playful complaints are lost when Katherine’s eyes light on another man. “Oh look, there’s Race.”

Katherine has indeed spotted Race, who is down on his knees, weeding a flower bed at the edge of the park across the street. She grabs Jack’s hand and pulls him across the road, calling out to the boy. “Race!”

Race’s blond head, streaked with mud and soil, snaps up, searching for the owner of the voice. He smiles as he sees them approaching, leaning his elbows on the low wall between the pavement and the park and blinking up at them.

“Hey, Princess! Look a’ me, workin’!” Race gestures to himself with a grin as they come to a stop in front of him. “Thanks for speakin’ to that warden – ain’t half bad, this gardenin’ lark.”

“I’m glad.” Katherine beams.

She hadn’t expected much to come of asking around at church, but Mr. Osman, the church warden, had really shown up for them with this job for Race. Apparently, Mr. Osman’s brother is some sort of keeper for the city council and makes sure all the gardening stuff gets done. Katherine has never herself been too bothered about taking advantage of nepotism – that, after all, is why she worked for the _Sun_ and not the _World_ – but she’s quite willing to engage it as a technique for their boys. Hence, Race can now usually be found in one or other of the city’s parks. Mr. Osman’s brother lets him smoke on the job, provided that he works hard, and pays him well, so Race is in his element.

“Any particular reason you’s lookin’ like a drowned rat?” Race asks, pushing off the wall and getting to his feet as he turns his gaze on Jack. “Or did Kath finally get fed up o’ you an’ try to toss you in the Hudson?”

“Sod off.” Jack replies, shoving Race’s shoulder good-naturedly. “I’s jus’ got baptised, ‘f y’must know. ‘S holy water an’ all that crap.”

“ _Jack_.”

If she’s being honest, Katherine isn’t entirely sure whether what Jack just said is actually blasphemy, but it’s close enough to the line that it’s worth telling him off. Jack mumbles an apology and Race snorts, amused by just how whipped Jack is. _Just you wait,_ Jack thinks, fighting the urge to roll his eyes at the boy, _just you wait until you’re in love with somebody. I’m going to rib you about it endlessly._

“Ain’t baptisms for babies?” Race asks.

“You can get baptised at any age, Race.” Katherine cuts in, quick as a flash. Jack’s pride doesn’t need any more of a battering than it’s already had. “How’s the job?”

“Good.” He shrugs. “Same as any kinda outdoor work – summer stinks an’ winter’s freezin’, but it pays better than sellin’ papes. ‘S nice sharin’ wi’ Crutchie, too.”

Things, it seems to Jack, have really come together for Race over the past couple of weeks, with Katherine finding him this job and Crutchie offering him the room in the apartment that used to be Jack’s, now that the kid is paying rent himself. And, sure, Crutchie’s clerk job doesn’t pay all that much, though a damn sight more than last year when he was just an apprentice, and Race certainly isn’t rolling in it as a gardener, but it’s good, honest work that’s not dangerous. That’s more than most people can boast. That’s all Jack’s ever wanted for his brothers.

“That’s wonderful.” Katherine smiles.

“Y’should come round the apartment. I can’t cook for shit-“

“Watch it-“ Jack growls. 

Race rolls his eyes, but corrects himself. “-I can’t cook to save my life, but y’could come for dinner.”

Jack’s rule about not swearing in front of girls is, in Race’s personal opinion, as stupid as they come, given that he’s heard Katherine curse like a sailor when she’s stubbed her toe on one of the kitchen table legs. He can’t remember exactly which table leg it was, as there are three possibilities, whilst the other one is still supported by a stack of newspapers. Katherine hasn’t said anything about it to Jack in while and though Jack knows that he should probably get it fixed, it feels like a part of their house, now, the table supported by newspapers. Broken and patched back together, but better for it.

“We’d love to. You’re coming for family dinner night next Saturday, aren’t you?”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

…

It takes until the day that Katherine gets the final lot of edits back on her manuscript for Jack to ask, properly. He’s hinted before, let her know that he’s open to listening to her talk about her book, let her know just how proud he is of her. Katherine’s certain that, despite how hard Jack finds reading, he’d read it from to cover to cover if she asked him to. But she hasn’t wanted him to read it, not until very, very recently. And when she says very, very recently, she means about five seconds ago, just after he asked.

See, there’s something so very personal about sharing her writing with another person. And whilst she’s bared all of herself to Jack, inside and out, it still feels odd to hand over a stack of pages that essentially contain her soul. Especially with a novel like this. Especially a novel that bears their daughter’s name, her sister’s name, and both their stories. The circumstances may be different, there may be a plot, but the emotions behind it are the same – the raw grief, the anger, the ecstasy of realising that you are not alone. It takes him asking for her to remember that this is Jack, her Jack. And really, there’s nothing to be afraid of. The manuscript doesn’t have to be perfect before he reads it, or she reads it to him, because she isn’t perfect. But he loves her enough that it doesn’t matter.

“What’s this book ‘bout then?” He asks, idly twirling a strand of her hair around the index finger of his right hand.

It’s a bit of a struggle to fit them both into this armchair, at this point, with Jack balancing a sketchbook on the left armrest whilst his right arm wraps around her, drawing her to him, and her curled in his lap, head tucked into his neck as she reads through the final draft, eyes scanning her editor’s notes scribbled in the margins in red pen. Still, they manage. They want to. Jack’s intense tactility will never wear off, Katherine has realised, and, honestly, she doesn’t really mind. It’s a little infectious. She wants to be here, to slot against him like this, lazy and languid and _close._ If you were to ask Jack, in this exact moment, where Katherine ends and he begins, well, he wouldn’t be able to tell you.

Katherine frowns, lowering her work to look at him and tilting her chin up so that she can see what’s going on behind those beautiful eyes of his. “You’ll be angry.”

“At you?” Jack asks, turning to meet her eyes. “Never.”

The fire that burns low in the grate dances in the dampness of his eyes, flickering in the way that he looks at her. Really, that reflection is the only fire his eyes have ever shown her. Katherine doesn’t do well with fire. She won’t go to bed until Jack has fully extinguished it each night and left their door keys on the hook by the front door. It’s perhaps fate, then, or something like it, that means she’s married a man who is stretched out before her in watercolours, grey and blue and beautiful. No, she decides. Not fate. Choice.

“It’s called _Lucy._ ” She tells him, biting her lip. “It’s a novel about grief.”

“Oh.”

She winces. “I told you that you’d be angry.”

“I ain’t angry, Ace.” Jack says, and she knows it’s the truth by the gentle promises his fingertips spell out on her skin. “I don’- I don’ understand why you wants to dwell on it, an’ I’s worried it’s gonna upset you, but I ain’t angry.”

“Well, it’s not about our Lucy specifically.” Katherine avoids his gaze, chewing her lip further. “Or even my Lucy. It’s fiction, not an autobiography.”

“I should hope not; it’d be pretty damn short seein’ as you’s only twenty.” Jack chuckles, a sound that fills Katherine with hope.

On the arm of the chair, Jack sets down his pencil and brings his hand up to brush his thumb across her bottom lip, easing it from the grip of her teeth. _Don’t,_ his touch says, _you’ll make it bleed._ He’s told her that enough times, too many years of trying to keep his boys from splitting open lips chapped from cold.

“Will you read me some o’ it?” He asks, running his hand, its job now accomplished, down her arm.

“I don’t-“ she falters, fighting the urge to take her lip back between her teeth, “-will it upset you?”

“I dunno. I wanta hear it, though.”

Katherine looks at him, long and lingering, then shuffles the pages in her hands, searching for the first chapter. When she finds it, she takes a deep breath and starts to read.

 _“Lucy left traces of herself behind when she left.”_ She stops a moment, clears her throat a little, the inside of her mouth suddenly coated with sand. _“Some were visible; fingerprints trailing through the dust on the mantelpiece, dog-eared pages and notes scribbled in the margins, a coffee mug left on the side. Others weren’t. The smell of her, lingering on blankets and moth-eaten dresses in the wardrobe. The taste of Christmas cake, made with her recipe. Footprints in the leaves, crunching through the piles, or in the snow, hopping from foot to foot in the imprints of strangers. There are notches in the doorframe that leads from the kitchen to the living room, notches that catalogue a childhood. Numbers carved beside each one, marking out birthdays and Christmases and ‘dad have I grown yet’s.”_

Beside her, Jack sniffs. Katherine stops reading and looks at him, realises that there are tears rolling down his cheeks from the corners of his closed eyes. She’s seen Jack cry before, of course. The night that Lucy died and the day he tried to paint over the mural in the spare bedroom and the moments when he thinks she doesn’t see. But he’s never cried in front of her, not like this, not so open and trusting. No, now he’s _letting_ her see him cry. And Katherine has shared a bed with this man for the best part of a year and has been his first port of call in times of need for almost two, but she’s never felt closer to him than she does right now. Letting the book drop closed in her lap, she reaches up to stroke his hair back from his face, carding her fingers through the dark curls.

“You okay?” She asks, oh-so soft and warm and gentle.

Jack nods, swallowing before he opens his eyes. They’re a little bit misty, but he smiles at her through it, not that big performative Jack Kelly grin, though she loves that just as well, but a small smile, sweet and private and just for her.

“I’s real glad you’s done this.” He says, reaching up in turn to tuck a loose wisp of hair behind her ear, letting his fingers brush against her cheek as he does so. “I – I wasn’t sure ‘bout it, at first. But I’s real glad. ‘S like… you’s given them the futures they never got to have. Our little one. Your sister. They’s got futures now.”

Futures, yes. And so, Katherine realises, do the two of them. When they lost Lucy, everything they had planned for their future had fallen apart, the future they’d spent two years carving out of solid granite, ignoring everybody’s derisive comments and stares. But the end of Lucy, loved and lovely and utterly unforgettable, isn’t the end of them. They have a future, the two of them intertwined for as long as there are rings on their fingers and ways to say _I love you_.

“You wanta carry on a bit?” Jack asks.

She knows he means the book. She knows he means so much more. “Do you want me to?”

He nods. Because it is a choice. It’s not about what happens to them, but what they want, what they choose. And Katherine chooses him. They’ve chosen one another, for better or for worse, and they keep making those choices, over and over again. Because, at the end of the day, that’s what loving another person is, isn’t it? Katherine clears her throat.

_“There was a space left behind by Lucy when she passed through that doorway for the last time, a space which visitors and residents alike found themselves falling into and unable to escape, something missing, somehow. The story of Lucy’s leaving is a long one, but it begins, as all good stories do, with a newspaper…”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments make my days brighter :)


	69. Chapter 69

The first time Katherine had walked into this particular publishing house, she’d been expecting a rejection similar to the one that her book had faced from the past three. It certainly looked like the other publishing houses she’d tried, rising in tall stone with arched windows and neat, gold handled doors set in the front. Katherine had forced herself to walk in, resigned, for the most part, to go home and give up on the endeavour entirely. Perhaps, she’d thought, it was a stupid idea in the first place.

However, there was something about walking into an office and discovering that the potential future editor that she’d been in contact with, E. Brown, did not have a first name like Edward, or Evan, or even Ethelred, but instead was named _Emily,_ that had given her a pretty good feeling about this whole thing. Sure enough, she’d walked out of that interview with a contract.

And today, she walks out holding out the proof copy of her novel. As in, an actual book. Katherine can’t quite believe it.

…

Honestly, Jack’s on a bit of a high as he rushes over, hoping that he’ll make it to the publishing house before Katherine leaves for home. The meeting went even better than he’d been hoping, really, considering how little he was expecting to get out of it. He’d expected Mr. Anderson to laugh him straight out of his office, once Jack walked in and he figured out, like all the posh folks do, by his accent or the way he carries himself or something, that Jack’s flying by the seat of his pants on things like this. It was an honour just to meet the guy, truly, Jack loves his paintings. The idea that he would actually hire Jack to paint the lobby of the building that he’s constructing on 40th street, specifically to house these fancy artists, well, it’s ludicrous. And, yet, Jack just signed a contract. For the next ten weeks, his evenings and weekends will be spent painting a mural on the walls of this lobby. Good grief, the only time he’s felt luckier is the day he married Katherine.

He makes it, just, seeing Katherine stepping out of the door just as he rounds the corner next to the publishing house. Dodging a few random pedestrians, he jogs over, pulling off his cap and shoving his other hand deep into his trouser pocket.

“You lookin’ for somebody to walk you home, Miss?”

Katherine spins around, grinning. “What are you doing here?”

“Meetin’ finished early.” Jack grins back, then nods at the volume she is holding her hand. “Let’s see it then.”

The binding of the proof copy is grey, though it will be a deep forest green when it’s published for real. The publishers haven’t managed to exactly match the colour of the wool that is pinned inside the cover of Katherine’s bible, but it’s pretty damn close. Neither are the words on the front of it embossed, merely stamped on in black ink. That doesn’t make them any less incredible.

**LUCY**

**~ A Novel ~**

**by Katherine Plumber**

Jack stares down at it in wonder. Katherine shifts. Jack’s been so supportive up until now, but what if it’s all too much?

“Ace, ‘s your name.” He says, quiet and prayerful. “On a book.”

Katherine winces. “There’s still time to have it changed, if you don’t like it.”

“You kiddin’? Sweetheart, this ain’t nothin’ to do wi’ me. ‘S all you. You deserve all the recognition for this.” He hooks an arm around her waist and pulls her into his side, pressing a kiss to her hair. “‘Sides, I want Katherine Kelly all to myself. The rest o’ the world can have Katherine Plumber.”

“How did your meeting go?” Katherine asks, leaning her head on his shoulder. “It was for that job down on 40th Street, right?”

“Yeah, fine.” Jack dismisses the question, instead choosing to take hold of her waist, pick her up, and spin Katherine round, wholly ignoring the dirty looks they get from passers-by. She squeaks at first, the action unexpected, but soon wraps her arms around his neck and laughs into his mouth, savouring the taste of him, warm and soft as brown sugar. “I’s so proud o’ you, y’know?” Jack tells her as he sets her down on the pavement again.

“You only tell me every day.” Katherine laughs, stroking her thumb along the line of his neck and relishing the way his Adam’s apple jumps in his throat at the touch. It’s definitely too early in the evening to be wishing that he’d take her home (and then to bed), but she’s seriously considering asking him to (the answer would be an effusive yes, it always is) but then he says: “I’s tellin’ you, I admire smart girls-“

And she remembers herself, pulling away from him a little to look at him properly, smoothing out his collar as she presses for an answer. “Seriously, how was your meeting?”

Jack shrugs a little, scratching at the back of his neck. His answer, when it comes, is quiet. “I got the gig.”

“What? Jack, that’s incredible!” A smile bursts across Katherine’s face. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Today’s your day, Kath. First proof copy an’ all.”

“You’re too sweet.” She nudges him with her shoulder, taking his hand as they start to stroll down the pavement. “Your success is my success, remember? You and me.”

He nudges her back. “You an’ me.”

Katherine thinks that she could live forever in this moment, caught between dizzying success and the perfect, grounding force in her life. A book, her book. Jack, her Jack. “Can I read it to you tonight?”

“Later.” Jack grins, steering them around a corner. “I’s got a surprise for you first.”

When Katherine finally figures out where they’re going, she laughs. “Jacobi’s? Jack Kelly, you sure know how to treat a girl.”

“Shuddup, you.” He rolls his eyes, pushing the door to the restaurant open with his shoulder.

The second they step inside, Jack raises the book high in the air like a newspaper and shrugs on the voice he hasn’t used to hawk a pape in almost two whole years. “Extra, extra – Katherine Kelly is a published novelist!”

Jacobi’s is fuller than she’s ever seen it; all of the newsies, even the ones who have left the lodgehouse like Crutchie and Race, the entirety of the Jacobs family plus Miriam, Medda and Daisy, and even Edith and Constance and her Father (the last of whom is sitting in the corner and looking thoroughly disapproving but is nonetheless there). Katherine whirls to face Jack, a smile spreading across her face. He’s set this up, of course he has, a celebration. Goodness, but she’s lucky. The newsies swarm around her, clapping her on the back and whooping. The proof copy of the book gets passed around, gloated over, congratulated.

And then Crutchie holds it aloft and yells: “Hey Jack! You read the front page o’ this?”

“Nah, Crutchie,” he calls back from where he’s been laughing with Davey, “I ain’t hawkin’ front page headlines no more!”

“Well, get readin’.”

Jack takes the book from Crutchie’s outstretched hand and flips it open to the front flyleaf. The single sentence printed there is written in black ink on white paper, the same way they started out. It’s a book, but it’s fresh off the press and it smells like newsprint, the same way that Katherine does, the same way that he does. It smells like home.

**For Jack, for believing in me even when I did not believe in myself.**

It takes a moment for the letters to piece themselves together under his squinting eyes, but when they do his mouth drops open a little. He reaches out for Katherine, not taking his eyes from the page, catching hold of her hand and pulling her to him. He can do such things, these days, as can she; he has an awareness of her presence in the same way he knows where his hand is without having to look. They orbit one another. Katherine allows herself to be pulled away from her conversation with Miriam and Daisy for a moment, turning to him and catching sight of the page. Her throat closes up.

Slowly, slowly, he turns to look at her. “For sure?”

Katherine smiles, going up on tiptoes to kiss him and leaning her forehead against his, intertwining their fingers so closely that the wedding bands on their fingers clink together.

“For sure.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beaux Art studios, completed in 1901, was a built specifically by the painter Abraham Archibald Anderson (whose parents apparently liked alliteration) to have apartments for artists with studios included. In my head, Jack is commissioned to paint murals on the walls of the lobby to welcome artists in and set the tone of the space. The building, now renovated, stands on 40th street to this day. 
> 
> Just the epilogue to go now! Comments make my days brighter :)


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